Navneet Sharma
The demand for education and its standardization in developing countries is often the desire to reach standardized societies or developed nations with its help. The standardization of teaching profession becomes its first step, according to which the biggest obstacle in the development of the nation are those teachers who are not contributing adequately to the ‘human resource development’ of the citizens.
The new education policy seems to be demanding a radical change in the education system. It considers it essential to have a quality teacher for quality education, suggesting many changes. A document setting a standard for a quality teacher should be prepared, such a recommendation is a contribution of this policy regulatory document. On this recommendation, a blueprint for the entire nation was prepared by the National Council for Teacher Education in a hurry. It has been claimed that it has been created to fulfill the objective of the New Education Policy to provide equitable opportunities of education of the highest quality to all the students.
The concept of quality must have been the predecessor of the concept of standardization. It must have thrived on a common high level of behavior or sharing of resources. The concept of standardization or standardization may have been reduced to social behavior and skills due to the variation and formidable possibilities of human behavior. The development of machine and mechanization has established the concept of standardization and standardization.
It is believed that the mechanistic ability to produce uniform product and continuously at the same level has only confirmed the concept of standardization and its inevitable. From pressure cooker to machine-made sweaters may be the norm, but from artwork to hand knitting sweaters, if we seek and set the standard, it will hardly do justice to this venture.
The process of teaching also passes through so many human contexts that it cannot be considered a mechanized crime. Student, his/her social, economic, cultural and linguistic background, curriculum, content, learning objectives and assessment as well as teacher’s concerns, his/her educational background, subjects, pre-teaching training and preparation etc. are so many steps which neither have a single essence. Possible, nor desirable. The difference between teaching and conversion will also discourage us from setting its standards. Teaching is the process of assisting the student in the knowledge formation journey from the unknown to the known or the instinctively, so its standards can hardly be of any universal character.
The demand for education and its standardization in developing countries is often the desire to reach standardized societies or developed nations with its help. The standardization of teaching profession becomes its first step, according to which the biggest obstacle in the development of the nation are those teachers who are not contributing adequately to the ‘human resource development’ of the citizens.
In the Indian context, 71.7 percent at the pre-primary level, 40.6 percent at the primary level and 31.3 percent at the upper primary level, respectively, do not meet their required qualifications. This directly affects the learning ability of the students and they are also deprived of general knowledge, writing and calculation. Based on these, there is a demand for standardization of teacher and teaching. It should also be added to this figure that a large proportion of these ‘ineligible’ teachers are teaching in private and unaided schools.
In all efforts to privatize education, a government document to ensure standards is hardly effective in the economics of privatization. There are currently fifteen lakh schools in India, of which eleven lakh are government. A large force of ‘ineligible’ teachers are teaching in those four lakh private schools, on which any form of government control or restriction will be seen as an attack on their personal autonomy as an interference. How this document will be implemented in government schools is also a different question.
This document strongly advocates for the guidance of newly appointed teachers by their senior teachers. But according to the government figures, there are about one lakh ten thousand schools in India where there is only one teacher. To whom and by whom will this teacher be guided, that is a difficult question.
If we look at the sex ratio data, there are seventy-five female teachers out of hundred male teachers at the primary level and sixty female teachers at the secondary level. The guidance and promotion of these teachers will be the responsibility of male teachers. This document is assuming that there is no gender bias among the teachers, nor is there any possibility of writing a new script of exploitation.
This figure is very dire in some states, for example in Bihar, there are only twenty female teachers for every hundred males. Similarly, in the caste equations also, the teachers coming from the general category, only eight percent of the Dalit teachers, will promote knowledge and guide with great compassion. It might have worked in a system which has no socio-economic results, but such efforts would introduce a new kind of hierarchical and alphabetical order in schools, that is certain.
In deciding how a teacher will grow in his or her professional life, this document suggests that there should be hierarchies of advancement at each level, rather than being a primary to secondary teacher and secondary to senior secondary teacher. This document suggests the order of progressive, proficient, skilled and head teacher at each level. For example, if someone becomes a primary teacher, he will always be a primary teacher. Even if the pay scale is not discussed, then the educational qualification for becoming a teacher at the higher secondary level will be different from that of the progressive level at the primary level.
Will the salary of a primary head teacher be more than that of a skilled higher secondary teacher? The solution to such serious questions is not found in this document. It also completely ignores the subject wise variation of teachers. For example, each school will have only one teacher for physical education, music, art, history, etc. In this situation, who will be the head teacher who will take over the hand of the new teacher? Will the teachers of these subjects be guided by mathematics or science teachers?
Before standardization of teacher and pedagogy, standards of institutionalization of school and knowledge should be set. bridging the resource and infrastructural gap of Kendriya Vidyalaya and Municipal School or Rural School, standards for curriculum formulation and evaluation and selection process of teachers, their pay scales and standards of service conditions should be fixed. In the absence of all this, the standards of teachers and teaching will remain weak and will give rise to new anomalies.
Only after all this can the question of epistemology be reached, under which these questions are whether the standards and standardization of education are different from the accessibility of quality education or whether the quality and standards will be fully applicable to human prosecution, Isn’t it all cricket players expected to be/be like Sachin Tendulkar? In the light of Indian knowledge tradition, if all the teachers became Dronacharya, then who would become Savitribai Phule? Ultimately, if the Guru is ‘Govind’, will humans now set the standard for ‘Govind’, both the teacher and the pedagogy stems from an internal stress in which faith is essential and not standardization.