Learning Teaching

On close reading, a news story under the headline ‘Teachers’ role vital to make students creative’ throws up more pertinent questions than it answers. The news highlights the call on the teachers by some international organisations working in Nepal’s education sector to make creative efforts for the betterment of children and the society. In a joint statement, issued on World Education Day, the organisations have emphasized on professional knowledge and teachers’ skills for imparting quality education to the students. Some of the assumptions behind the call are that the teachers hold the key to building knowledge societies; they inspire, challenge and empower learners to be innovative and responsible global citizens; and the well-trained ones promote values such as that of citizenship and peace. Gleaning from the news, one answer to how to make the teachers play their desired role is to train them after recruitment and provide them with continuous professional development opportunities and support.

Unanswered are many other ‘hows’: How can schools recruit the best teachers in the first place when teaching means low pay and low status? How can we be sure what will be the appropriate training for our teachers to help them make students creative or innovative? How capable are the present government and non-government actors to train some 300,000 community and institutional school teachers working across Nepal? How are they going to get the human and material resources to conduct the training on such a massive scale? The need for training teachers to engage in flexible life-long learning, through their conscious effort at unlearning the rigidities inherited from the past, is obvious in a fast-changing, knowledge-driven, networked world. Trained and professional teachers will certainly help raise and maintain the dignity of the teaching profession. The teachers’ organisations, instead of working as instruments of political power, would have to articulate the general code of behaviour and role expected of teachers in their roadmap to boost the prestige of the teaching profession.

A few teachers who are doing better as real estate agents or political activists may have ruined the reputation of teaching. No training can help restore the damage their activities do to the profession. In all likelihood, however, most other teachers are well-meaning, gentlemen and ladies, the most worthy citizens, who are giving their best despite the severe constraints that the society imposes on them through low pay and little respect. These motivated teachers, given better working conditions and training opportunities, hold the potential to transform the future of our children and the society. By their routine brush with the students, they can foster truly innovative and revolutionary possibilities. If trained on the relevant theories, best practices and context-based research, many teachers can go to the classroom with all the confidence to help the students become creative and innovative. Any intervention, therefore, from the policy-level support to even a brief training session, should be geared towards making the teachers take bold risks in search of a meaningful outcome. Supposing the policy-level support is available, the challenge is conceiving, planning, funding and implementing flexible training courses to motivate and guide the teachers in unlearning what is obsolete and learning a better teaching method and substance, forever.