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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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It’s all about bonding
School where every child learns 40 languages Campus
Notes
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It’s all about bonding ONE of my colleagues in the staff room announced: “Taare Zameen Par is a good movie. All the teachers and parents must see it.” “It not only deals with a dyslexia or a learning disability, it also promotes relationship building among the teachers and pupils,” piped in another teacher. The small discussion got me thinking about the importance of the process of relationship building. The process of education has to be liberal and democratic, for education needs to free the young scholar from the fetters the system is bound with. In an education system, which is rigid and authoritarian in nature, the individual is sidelined and the group emerges as supreme. The learner bows down to the supremacy of the group and loses his individuality in the process. If the system is democratic in nature, the main objective is the betterment of the learner. The student is associated with the group mind for the development of his personality and enhancing his dignity. The group’s efforts are to foster healthy teacher-student relations. School and college life has its pains and pleasures. The teacher and the taught have a two-way communication, where both are equally involved and neither is a passive recipient. The teacher has to encourage free expression of thoughts and opinions. The teacher takes out time to talk to children and help them analyse a situation. The students will understand a situation better if you reason with them. The teacher helps the students to understand the processes of assimilation, sharing, telling tales, rumour mongering, etc. A classroom is not a classroom if there is no noise. Children shout, play the fool, holler at each other and make enough noise to bring the roof down. The noise factor has to be controlled by the teacher. Allow healthy discussions and encourage free expression with frequent reminders of discipline maintenance. Sports and recreation are an excellent opportunity to foster bonds with students. The relationship between the teacher and taught is a formal one, the teacher has to break the ice and develop a relationship of camaraderie. Playing games with the children during recess and offering your tiffin if the child has forgotten his at home are ways to nurture a relationship with school goers. Rationality, faith, love, trust and understanding form the basis of any relationship. Students are open to reason and a teacher should reason with them to solve problems that arise in everyday teaching-learning processes. Trust is built over a period of time. The students should feel comfortable with their educators who are hard taskmasters and are yet playful with an excellent sense of humour. The teacher has to develop a ‘helping hand’ and try to find a solution to the problems faced by children. Children are bound to be mischievous and the mistakes made by them can’t always be condoned. These mistakes have to be rectified. Punishments are often given to students. Hitting, boxing the ears and other forms of corporal punishment are ways of the past. The teacher is the mentor and should not humiliate the child or lower his self-esteem. Try reasoning with the student who has done wrong and mind my words it works wonders. The child has to be made familiar with the rules and regulations of the educational institution. In boarding schools cancellation of a town leave or a movie are effective ways of punishment. Withdrawing of tokens or praise can also act as punishment. Schools provide all the facilities but students need love and care. Teachers who are genuine and treat the youngsters with respect are popular among the students. A teacher has to don the robe of a guide and a counsellor. He has to come down to the level of the children so that they can identify with him. The class has to be kept busy and the energies of these young scholars need to be channelised. Creativity needs to be encouraged in the form of art, music, writing or craft. Every institution has activity periods or tutorials. Let this be a masti ki pathshala, where both the teacher-taught are at ease in each other’s company. Teachers be liberal in your attitude and innovative in your teaching style. Children will learn, grow and mature by making mistakes. You can only bond with your charges if you share their failings and use the principle of reason after you have shed your rigid attitude.
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School where every child learns 40 languages IF this is March, it must be Nepali. Welcome to Newbury Park Primary School in Redbridge, north-east London, where its 850 pupils will have learnt The school has adopted a policy of teaching each language spoken by the 40 ethnic groups among its pupils. "It was more out of politeness," said Joe Debono, who runs the "language of the month" programme. "You have 250 Tamil children in the school. It is just polite to greet them in their own language and recognise their culture. And it is a way of celebrating the ethnic diversity of the school and not seeing it as a problem." The scheme has tangible benefits, he explained, as it can help children who may be refugees to overcome the sense of alienation they might feel in a new school. It may also encourage pupils to study in more depth one of the languages they have encountered at Newbury Park when they transfer to secondary school, where language learning is compulsory for 11 to 14-year-olds. Mr Debono selects a child every month to present lessons in their native tongue. He researches the language with their parents and films a video of the child talking their own language which can then be used in every class in the school. In introducing the new language of the month, every class starts by greeting each other in the language to be learnt. In consultation with the pupils, Mr Debono draws up a list of a dozen or so phrases they feel it would be useful to learn in each language. The pupils then go on to recite them. "It's the sort of language that would be useful if you were holidaying in the place," he said. The pupils go on to play games to further their knowledge of the language, with teachers placing cards with words on their heads. They have to guess what the words are by asking their pupils questions. The pupils then shout out "yes" or "no" in the language of the month. This month, it is the turn of seven-year-old Aneeka Bhattarai, whose family is from Nepal, to be the school's latest foreign language teacher. "It gives them a lot of self-esteem and they are quite proud they've done it," said Mr Debono. "They've appeared on the internet, too, and, in some cases, all their relatives abroad in Nepal or Sri Lanka have watched it and said: 'That's so-and-so's daughter on the screen.' They often seem quite fascinated that an English school is taking the trouble to teach their language." Mr Debono is at pains to point out that the language of the month is not taught as part of the modern foreign languages curriculum. Under new government regulations, every primary school will have to ensure that all its pupils start learning a language from the age of seven by 2010. "It's not taught in depth," he said. "It is complementary to the national curriculum." Newbury Park's pioneering project has aroused interest among teachers from other schools in ethnically diverse areas who have visited it to see if they might be able to implement a similar project in their own schools. The scheme has also won international acclaim, with visits from Finnish and Danish schools. — By arrangement with
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Campus Notes The MDU Vice-Chancellor, Prof R.P. Hooda, has constituted the advisory body of the university's Centre for Haryana Studies for a period of two years. The director of the centre, Prof S. S. Chahar, said Prof Rajbir Singh, Prof B. D. Yadav and Prof Vidya Siwach had been nominated members from MDU, Prof D. R.Chaudhary, Prof K. C.Yadav and Prof H. P. S. Sangwan had been put on the panel as outside experts. Besides, a professor from the Haryana Institute of Public Administration (HIPA) and a nominee of the Commissioner, Higher Education, Haryana, would be the other members of the advisory body. Professor Chahar said the centre, which had recently come into existence, would execute research projects on various socio-economic and political aspects related to the state. These include gender issues, rural health and sanitation, rural education, khap panchayats, agriculture, unemployment, political recruitment process, consumer protection and functioning of welfare schemes etc. "Apart from this, the centre would organize seminars, workshops for administrators and debates on current issues prevalent in the state," the director added.
Medicos protest
The recent days witnessed a series of protest demonstrations by present and former MBBS students of the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS), Rohtak, on the MDU campus. The medicos have been alleging serious irregularities in the MD/MS/MDS/PG Diploma entrance examination conducted by MDU on February 24. During the course of protests, the medicos burnt the effigies of university authorities and raised slogans against the vice-chancellor and controller of exams. The students have been demanding cancellation of the exam and holding a CBI inquiry into the entire episode. The university authorities had constituted a committee to probe the charges. The committee, comprising senior faculty members of the PGIMS and MDU, has been asked to submit its report by March 15. However, the medicos have termed the formation of the committee an eyewash and demanded a thorough probe into the matter by some independent agency. — Contributed by Sunit Dhawan
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ADMISSION DEADLINEAgricultureIndian Council of Agricultural Research, Room No 226, Krishi Anusandhan Bhavan II, Pusa, New Delhi 110012All India Competitive Exam & Award of JRF
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Amarinder Sandhu