Class system of education, quality of education and our children

A few days ago I agreed to attend a scientific competition organized by a private school in Peshawar. As a teacher and scientist, such competitions are always of interest to me, because on the one hand, these competitions increase the interest of students in scientific topics, and on the other hand, the enthusiasm of these children is satisfying and satisfying for me personally. It serves as a ray of hope.

The competition was for students of classes 1 to 5, in which it was obviously not possible to expect new, unique or untouched scientific innovations. The children participating in this competition built various models under the guidance of their teachers, including models of the solar system, environmental topics like pollution, and water treatment plants.

About a dozen schools had sent teams of their students to participate in the competition. Although for a city like Peshawar, which has hundreds of public and private schools, such a small number is certainly a momentous concern that our schools simply cannot stand out from the run-up and resulting marks. Not all, but the vast majority of our schools are still stuck in the system and style of education of the distant past. Where they think it is impossible for children to have any positive educational activity outside the classroom.

Well, let's go back to this competition. One positive thing I have always observed in such competitions is the enthusiasm and joyful participation of the students. Our children prefer doing new things than memorizing books. This is not the same thing because this is the trend of students all over the world. In developed countries, the education system is designed in such a way that students get the opportunity to engage in maximum learning activities.

In this competition, teams from government schools, private schools with normal street neighborhood and branded "burger" private schools participated. The models of all these teams were also almost on the same topics, which have been mentioned above. But one thing that struck me was the difference in the preparation of these children. While students from government and street schools lacked confidence, they had little to say other than scripted sentences recited by their teachers. It is not at all that all these students lacked self-confidence, some of them were even very confident about their models. But often the children had to tell me to say a little louder that they were repeating their script in a very slow voice. There were students whose voices were so loud that their entire presentation had been 'choreographed' by their teacher but they didn't know anything beyond the script.

Usually, I try to make my students think in my lectures etc. that they are not sitting in my class just for the sake of attendance. Get these kids to talk outside of their script. One way is to ask questions which I asked and they answered according to their age and class. But another very simple method that I adopted was that I used to say to all of them that I don't know English so tell me in Urdu. This forces anyone to analyze the information in their mind and think carefully in translating from one language to another. Translating is not just reversing the words, but you have to make a whole meaningful sentence so that the person in front of you can understand what you are saying.

I didn't see any lack of self-confidence in branded school children as compared to normal schools, nor did I feel any script. On their model, I never once had to say speak louder, but several times I had to say one child at a time. Irrespective of whether a branded or a 'burger' school has more emphasis on English, I asked these students all the questions and answers in Urdu, which they answered without any hindrance or hesitation.

All these children had and will have many differences, home environment, educational and economic background of parents, but despite all these one basic difference which is able to cure all other deficiencies is a good teacher. . A teacher who doesn't just fulfill his duty hours but tries his best to do justice to his profession. Most of us parents must have studied in schools with tote, chalkboard writing, in our time schools had neither tote nor blackboard, whereas today's children are studying in the age of smartphones and internet. But despite all these things, a good teacher can make up for any such deficiency with his hard work and dedication.

You can question about the curriculum that maybe our curriculum is inferior compared to the world and is not compatible with the requirements of modern times. But I would like to answer this objection from my personal observation. Some twenty years ago when I was entering, I used to try to use the college library as much as possible. I have been a bookworm since childhood, so in every institution I went to, the first friendship I made was with the librarian so that I had better access to the library than everyone else. I used to read books of A and O level biology, chemistry and physics etc. in inter and used to compare them with my inter books.

It was Believe me, there is no significant difference in terms of information between our and A, O level books. Yes, the main difference was in the way the information was presented. A and O level books used to have information in an interesting way whereas in our books it was just in the form of big notes.

Probably in second year, the nitrogen cycle was shown differently in the A-level bio book than in our book. I liked the style of the second book and made that cycle in my bio assignment or a test. On this, our bio teacher not only forbade me not to do it in the exam because board checkers will only check the papers from the inter book and if you do this cycle, they will mistake it. The whole question will be wrong. It's not that my bio teacher was a frog in the well or didn't like using other books. Not at all, but it was his realistic thought that the marks of my student should not decrease, which is the prevailing thought of our education system.

The success or goodness of any teacher should not be measured by the marks obtained by his students but by their ability to think and analyze. Just as the message was given in Aamir Khan's film 3 Idiots that "Be capable, success will follow you." We have to enable our children, they will take their own share of success and for that we must work hard on our teacher.