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Strengthening student-teacher bond
Bullying happens, and things do get better Campus Notes
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Strengthening student-teacher bond THE recent news items regarding more and more teachers in schools resorting to corporal punishment and the students using violent means against the teachers, is a very disturbing trend and needs to be arrested immediately. In today’s world, it is not possible to expect the age-old tradition of reverence of the student for the teacher and love, affection and genuine concern of the teacher for the student. The teacher and the student can’t remain isolated from the impact of sweeping changes in social, technological, political and legal systems. However, certain minimum standards of discipline and ethical conduct by the teacher as well as the student must be maintained for teaching-learning exercise to be useful. When Dr S. Radhakrishnan said, “Teachers should be the best minds in the country”, he asserted the “best minds”, not the “best brains”. However, over a period of time, our education system has ignored this difference and teachers are selected generally on the basis of the “best brain” parameter. Since a student, on an average, spends more than 30,000 hours in a school up to the plus two level, it is amply clear that the quality of teacher-student relationship shapes the future of young minds. Teaching has been accepted as a profession and is treated as such, though it will be unfair to confine the teacher within the limited scope of the definition of a professional. The term “professional” is generally understood to mean one who is very good at a particular thing and is paid for exercising that particular talent. Since we have the third largest professional workforce in the world and going by what Maugham said, we should be amply blessed with the capacity to progress. However, the quality of those who pass out from schools, colleges and professional institutions leaves much to be desired . Teachers are expected to imbibe a value system since value-based education is not possible without them. The major difference between the past masters and the teachers of today is their ability to realise their own potential and use the same for “man-making” of the student. The teacher is expected to respect the noble profession he has voluntarily taken up and conduct in a manner befitting the role of an ideal teacher. A teacher must recognise the special responsibilities placed on him for the advancement of knowledge of his students and discharge the duties of a friend, guide and genuine well-wisher. Such a teacher, whose passion is to learn and share knowledge with the student and transform them in to good human beings, can never think of using any abusive language or resort to any physical abuse of the students. Unfortunately, such teachers are few. A good teacher must do his best to encourage responsible behaviour among the students and help them become good citizens. A student also has a major role to play in creating and strengthening the bond between him and the teacher. The value system of the student has been affected adversely due to the turmoil in society. Student unrest has reached such proportions that it has shocked not only the parents and teachers but also the educationists and the intelligentsia. An average student seems to have lost his confidence in the system of learning and teaching as well as the system of governance. Unlike the student of the past, where there was only one teacher to take care of physical, spiritual and intellectual needs of the student, today a student has to learn many disciplines and develop ample skills to become employable. Today, no teacher is competent to teach all the subjects and the student getting education from one teacher is no more relevant and appropriate. Hence, the student has to be taught by more than one teacher. The teacher of earlier days used to put earnest effort to help a student realise his full potential and the student was ready to sacrifice anything for such a teacher. Today, the student’s attitude towards the teacher is very different. In the prevailing environment, the education system must ensure that character-building and personality development are compulsorily taught in all schools and colleges. The personality of the students should strengthened by restoring their faith in moral values. Every school must appoint some mentors as teaching must be supplemented with appropriate mentoring. Reviving the good old practice of tutorial classes, where the teacher and students can interact more informally can also be helpful in creating the required bond. |
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Bullying happens, and things do get better It has been interesting to see the reactions cross people's faces as they watch the latest internet video sensation spreading exponentially among the over the pommel horse and face first into the judges' podium, though that's worth watching, too. I mean the Fort Worth city councillor Joel Burns using his “announcements by council members” time recently to make an extraordinary speech to his colleagues and constituents. Struggling with tears, he found himself unable to read two sentences he had written about one “unfortunate day” in ninth grade, and appealed to teenagers in Fort Worth's schools: “You need to know that the story doesn't end (there). There's so, so, so much more. Yes, high school was difficult. Coming out was painful. But life got so much better for me. And I want to say to any teen who might see this ... It will get better ...'” That brave speech chimed with the heartfelt words from Barack Obama and Ellen DeGeneres about the recent teen suicides; but it was inspired by another, more personal campaign by the American journalist Dan Savage. In hundreds of shaky home movies filmed on hand-held camcorders in university dorms and living rooms across the world, men and women who have survived the traumas of high school promise their younger peers: “It gets better.” In a modern interpretation of George Herbert's wisest advice, “living well is the best revenge”, the first video by Savage and his partner Terry lists a lifetime of happy memories, which are echoed in recordings by Perez Hilton, “Dan in Philadelphia”, “a Columbine survivor”, “girl from Wisconsin” and, marvellously, Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, who says: “God loves you beyond anything you can imagine, and God loves you the way you are.” The campaign coincided in Britain last week with the launch by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission of one of the most comprehensive studies ever into fairness in the UK. The report warned that homophobic bullying and cyberbullying affect one in three young people of secondary school age, and anti-bullying charities added that schoolchildren are increasingly being driven to suicide. It reflects last year's findings by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers of a “conspiracy of silence” about homophobic bullying in schools and colleges, with the word “gay” now the most common put-down by pupils in the classroom. (It must be hard for teachers to challenge that casually homophobic term when it is also used freely by DJs employed by the BBC.) It is worrying to consider but, thanks to the new government's education policies, school life for gay children will probably not get better in the near future. The National Secular Society has warned that, wherever a Cameronesque policy of free schools has been tried, a rise in fundamentalist faith schools has been the result. Faith schools in which, according to Stonewall's 2007 School Report, homophobic bullying is 10 per cent higher, 75 per cent of gay and lesbian pupils suffering it. I too was bullied viciously at school; not because I was gay, as it happens, but because I was tall, or clever, or my hair was too curly, or something. I can wholeheartedly confirm that it does get better, so I was one of many who wept to see the US councillor stand up and tell his story. Imagine what it might mean, then, if our Prime Minister could be filmed telling his colleagues and constituents how he will make it better. Now that really would be a YouTube
sensation.—The Independent
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Campus Notes Academic administrators should grasp e-governance, said Guru Nanak Dev University Vice-Chancellor, Prof. A.S. Brar, pointing out that they should acquaint themselves with the functioning of computers, the Internet, etc., as their need was much more felt these days, particularly for cost cutting, transparency, efficiency, accountability and responsibility. Prof. Brar was delivering his presidential remarks here at the valedictory function of a three-day short-term course on “Computer Literacy for Academic Administrators” organised by the Academic Staff College of the university recently. More than 50 senior academic administrators, including principals, heads, directors, and deans of the colleges and the university departments attended. He said soon libraries would also be outdated as all information about the subjects and the quality research articles and books would be available on the Internet which could be accessed by a click of the mouse.
Credit-based evaluation system
The university has decided to make the credit-based evaluation system mandatory from the next academic session 2011-12 in all streams. Earlier, this system was implemented in the sciences, commerce and engineering departments. However, from the next academic session, it would be made mandatory for the all courses. According to this methodology, the student is evaluated on a 10-point scale and is awarded grades from 10 to one. The students will be evaluated by their class teacher and the minimum pass grade will be 4.5. This system is practical and prevalent in most parts of the world. This is based on continuous testing and evaluation and is friendly to both teachers as well as students. Under this system, every student is supposed to take one major and two minor examinations in one semester besides one quiz based on multiple choice questions.
Autonomous colleges
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. A.S. Brar has emphasised autonomy for colleges. He pointed out that managing the colleges would soon become difficult because of the rising manpower and infrastructural costs. He exhorted the colleges to apply to the University Grants Commission for attaining the autonomy and emphasised that the colleges should stress on quality education while providing the access to the poor and the needy as well.
Lecture on Indo-Pak relations
The university will organise a lecture on Indo-Pakistan relations on October 22 in the Guru Nanak Bhawan Auditorium of the university here. Prof Jagrup Singh Sekhon, Director, All-India Services Pre-Examination Training Centre of the university, said V.K. Sibal, former Foreign Secretary of India, would deliver the lecture under the distinguished lecture series on India's Foreign Policy organised by the Public Diplomacy Division of Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi. The lecture will be followed by a question-answer session in which prominent personalities, educationists, civil society activists will participate, he added. Navdeep Suri, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India and former alumnus of Guru Nanak Dev University, will also attend the lecture.
Youth festival rescheduled
The four-day Inter-Zonal Final Youth Festival of Guru Nanak Dev University scheduled to commence from October 25 in the Dasmesh Auditorium will now be organised from October 30 to November 2 at the same venue. Dr Jagjit Kaur, Director, Youth Welfare, said the change had been due to unavoidable circumstances. The first and second position holder teams of the each Zonal Youth Festival would participate in the items of music, theatre, dance, literary and fine art. —
Contributed by G.S. Paul
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In reaction to the recent suicides of the gay American teenagers Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh and Tyler Clementi, Mr Burns used the meeting to tell, for the first time, a story about his own teenage years in a small town in Texas.