Andre Wan Chow Wah
21 August 2007
opinion
Port Louis — It is commendable that the Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE) initiated a workshop on an induction programme for its new lecturers to equip them with a professional outlook and skills. It is essential to equip teacher educators with theoretical knowledge in education. This has got to be coupled with fieldwork activities, building a joint venture between student teachers and teacher educators, a complicity in the classroom situation that is ever posing a challenge to all educators.
Teacher educators and school teachers can, and should, be practically involved in an eternal discovery of how to maximize the motivation and learning ability of the pupils at school.
In this venture, the very aspirations and ambition of the pupils have to be taken into consideration, jointly, in the eternal discovery of how best to "teach". If one senses that there are neither aspirations nor ambitions in the pupils, it is then the job of teacher educators to "create" the aspirations and ambitions among them. The most common mistake of teachers is to concentrate solely on how to disseminate or inculcate factual knowledge in the receivers who are the pupils.
One has to bear in mind that students will not take in whatever content of the syllabus offered to them, if no consideration is given to the fact that they are sensitive human beings with critical minds and the right to ask questions or, even at times, to question what is being dished out to them. If the teachers' aim is simply to teach the content of the syllabus with no consideration for related and important facts about what goes on in the mind and heart of the child this is the wrong attitude and bad teaching, with no concern for the learner as a person. This reminds me of the Metaphysical poet John Donne who says to his mistress in a different context:
"For God's sake, Hold your tongue and let me love". Well, the bad teacher might be saying to the children: "For God's sake Hold your tongue and let me teach."
Does not this quotation reflect the long inherited attitude of teachers in our age-old traditional school system? This is exactly the system that we, at least I, went through when we were in primary school (nay, even secondary school); children being given a monstrous idea of the word 'inspector' and 'headmaster'.
Rather than being helped, pupils were punished (even physically) for not knowing or not understanding the teacher's explanations. The teacher was always right and the pupils wrong. We may believe that such a situation is today anachronistic, but I suspect there are still significant vestiges of it in our schools. All this will have to be looked at, and reshuffled into a consensus as to what should be the background knowledge of teacher educators and school teachers, when planning the desirable approach to the promotion of first-class education.
There is no place for "finger pointing" at anyone responsible for school education. The common target is to make sure that it is the skilful who should be in the driving seat of education. Such efficiency can only be attained through the relentless efforts of one and all through seminars, discussions, reading materials, teacher centres, and the like.
Those teachers who feel that they do not possess the required skills or that their methods of approach to education are outdated, should be willing to seek information and ways of improving and updating their skills. This should be an aggressive activity by all teachers who should appreciate that teaching and learning styles demand constant revision in the light of changing circumstances. Professor L. J. Lewis (my own teacher at the University of London) said in the 1970s: "The most knowledgable person is the one who can say 'I don't know, but I can find out'." Hence we sure can find out what best practice in school is. But all these ventures must inevitably be done in a professional and sustained way. The key phrase for success, can be termed "relevant communication and effort".
It is laudable that the MIE has recently organised the induction workshop on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Through the collaboration of the MOFET Institute of Tel Aviv (and later perhaps with other overseas institutes) we can deepen our understanding and appreciation of educational development elsewhere.
Nevertheless, we have to avoid the temptation of literally transplanting foreign systems into our own soil however successful they might have proven to be. It most probably would not work. We should by all means indulge in research on other systems, prior to making any conclusive evaluation of our own institutional practice.
The minister of Education, Dharam Gokhool, was right in saying in his inaugural address: "You need to become models of innovation, good practice and professionalism." This is probably because teacher educators have too long been preaching from an ivory tower. The minister's saying does tally with the simple but significant declaration of Professor Lewis that "teacher educators may have to go back to the classroom". It is this practical experience of teacher educators in the school classroom that can help enhance significant and positive improvement in our education.
It is heartening to learn that the resulting acquisition in the workshop will be stretched out over at least one year. This approach is a far cry from the usual practice of organising a seminar, writing the required report and forgetting it in a drawer. Education is never stagnant; it is (or should be) a moving target that has to be constantly revised or reaffirmed for the sake of improvement.
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