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This article throws light upon the three major components of education for children. The components are: 1. The Teacher 2. The Learning Material 3. The Learning Situation.
Component # 1. The Teacher:
I have nothing to say against those who are in favour of assigning our child the central place in the whole process of learning’s, and, to their preferring to call the teacher nothing more than a facilitator.
They prefer to call the teacher a facilitator because they are of the conviction that a child himself would go on learning being strongly prompted by nature itself, hence the most important role that a teacher is expected to perform is that of a facilitator only—which means that the teacher should provide such an environment, and, provide all such material which may greatly facilitate the process of learning (Fig. 22.5).
But I feel that the role of the teacher is so vital, a pivotal one that something more needs to be said regarding it. In the formal process of learning, where school has still not been dead in spite of its being declared so more than a quarter century back. Great may be the impact of the teacher on learning.
It is the personality of the teacher which may either attract the child to school or make him repulsive to every-thing related to school.
The teacher should be an example of patience and affection so that he or she may make up to a great extent for the absence of mother, and, the child may be weaned without much difficulty. A child happens to be very sensitive, he cannot be fooled by just a show of affection, only a genuine affection for the child can attract him to his teacher.
And, only then, every direction or teaching of the teacher assumes overwhelming significance for the child, and, the chances of the process of teaching and learning, being successful become very strong. This is something about the personality of the teacher, about his personal traits or characteristic qualities.
For a teacher to be a good hand at writing, and, to be a drawing hand, would be very important additional qualities by dint of which he can concentrate the attention of the child on the lesson being taught. Small children’s learning is greatly facilitated when the teacher can concretize the lesson, and, make it greatly interesting through drawing work.
The students’ attention may also be caught if a teacher can introduce a lesson with the recitation of some rhyme or poem, or, can sing some relevant song in a melodious tone. This is why drawing and vocal music should be taught in a training institute.
Teacher is the chief executive in the whole scheme of the education of each child in her custody. It is she who should, actually, be entrusted the work of planning for the education of each child; curricula-framers may be different but it is for the teacher to decide how much of the curriculum or syllabus is to be covered in a scheduled time; and it is also the teacher who is to decide as to how the same is to be done.
Years back, I read a book on educational psychology wherein it was given that the teacher should know not only Latin but John, too. That is, for the success of the teacher in her or his mission, it is essential that she or he must have studied, and must continue studying each child psychologically too; mere knowledge of the subject is not enough.
It is the teacher who can be the best judge as to what method or methods, technique or device would best suit a particular student. During our times, computer has greatly facilitated the work of self-education, nevertheless, the importance of the teacher in the process, should not be under-rated.
For up-dating the knowledge of our teachers and for keeping them abreast with innovations in educational thoughts and practices, refresher or orientation programmes need to be organised after a fixed duration.
Component # 2. The Learning Material:
It is at the level of lower primary classes that the question of the selection of books, assumes so great importance, as in case of higher classes only such books have to be taught as have been prescribed by the Board or the Department that conducts the examinations for the same.
In the market there are books galore. A hard competition is there among the publishers to grab the market. Some considerations, other than academic, affect the selection of books; that is not proper, as it would cause the interests of the children to be ignored.
While making selection of a book, the following things should be considered:
(i) Contents of the book;
(ii) Order of the units and lessons;
(iii) Presentation of the contents (it includes language, sentence structure, arrangement of items of learning, illustrations, printing, and so on) and
(iv) Exercises.
(i) Contents of the Book:
Contents of the book should be befitting to the age group, maturity level, needs and interests of the children.
Jean Piaget can be a good guide in this respect; he has divided the cognitive development into four stages, and, the author should be aware as to what the average student can grasp at a particular stage of development—we should not expect one to be interested in learning what one is not matured enough to grasp.
The contents, always, have to be graded standard-wise, and, thus books have to be got written to provide experiences class-wise in a series.
The child goes on developing physically, cognitively and conatively; the books and other supplementary materials should assist in the process of this natural development while at the same time the contents of the same must not be above the level of maturity of the average child.
The child, as he grows, is exposed to a continually widening social and physical environment, that he has to interact with; for a successful interaction to his environment, he needs to be equipped with new experiences which the new books of different subjects should provide to him, of course, his widening environment also provides new experiences—and learning is the end result of experiences.
Books, generally, provide the second-hand experiences accumulated through the ages, one cannot depend merely on the first-hand experiences earned by oneself.
So much development has been possible only because man could devise a means to communicate the ever-increasing lot of accumulated experiences. The writers of books need to decide the teaching points for different classes looking to the maturity levels of students of different age groups plus the individual and the social needs of them; and, the teaching items have to be graded in series of books for different classes.
(ii) Order of the Units and Lessons:
The contents of a book are arranged in units, and each unit may contain one, but, generally, it would have more than one lesson. But the order of units and lessons should be such that each succeeding lesson or unit is a bit more difficult than the previous one.
The preceding matter should have fully equipped the student to be able to grasp what comes after, that is, it must serve as previous knowledge for the new experiences to be graspable. In more simple way, we may say that the order of units and lessons should be from easy to difficult.
But it is not always the case that the units and/or lessons of a book, are so arranged; in such a case, the teacher should be free to decide what should be taught first and what afterwards; of course, his guiding principle would be from easy to difficult, as well as, he will have to see as to for a particular point of learning what ought to have been the previous knowledge.
(iii) Presentation of the Contents:
We come across a huge number of books dealing with the common topics of learning, nevertheless, one book may be considered better by far than the other because it presents the matter in such a clear and concise way that to grasp the same becomes easier. The language should be of the level of the class, and, should appear to be interesting to the students.
No superfluous word should be there; no repetition of the same thing should be there—the expression should have a perfect compactness, and beauty of its own. Nor, the sentences should be very long and cumbersome. Roundabout expression poses difficulty for the students to grasp it.
The word ‘compactness’ used here is to say that each sentence should be well-knit with its preceding and succeeding one— each sentence should appear to be flowing from its previous one in a natural way. ‘Compactness’ also indicates that each word in a sentence should have its own importance, and, cannot be removed without impairing the sense meant to be conveyed.
The matter of each lesson should also be so arranged that each part and each paragraph has a logical relationship with the one preceding, and succeeding it. In a book on Geography, ‘Vegetation’ cannot be taught before teaching about the “climate” of a particular place; in History, the governance of a ruler cannot be taught without first telling something about the early life and characteristic traits of the same.
The most important thing, especially, for the children at the primary level, is illustration. There should be a good many illustrations—clearly given in bright, beautiful colours. These illustrations, for the small children, would mostly be in the form of pictures.
They attract the attention of the children, and, help a lot in making the point of learning clear to them. In higher classes, the illustrations may be in the form of charts, graphs, or tables of different sorts.
The resourceful teachers can themselves arrange a lot of illustrations to make the lesson more interesting, easy to understand, and, enhance its chances for longer retention.
At the level of school administration, a list of articles—charts, maps, globe, pictures, overhead projector, epidiascope, television-set with VCR ought to be prepared to get procured as teaching aids so that the lesson would not be only much more interesting and easily graspable but enriched as well; and such a teaching aids a lot in a longer retention, too.
Printing is an important part of presentation. Some books are found to be very good examples of the printing art. The printing is an art, a skill, it has professionalism of its own kind which greatly increases the value of a book. The book meant for children, should have bold and beautiful fonts.
The printing should be very attractive for the children. The arrangement of words, sentences and paragraphs should be such that it may further add to the attractiveness of the book for the children. The key words may also be given in a different colour.
The paper of the book for the Nursery and L.K.G. kids, may be glazed one, or may otherwise be of such a superior kind which may have its own attraction for the children.
These things have great psychological significance; the child may not be interested in reading the matter of the book but its attractiveness would make him take it out off and on, and look into it. Thus, a book of this sort gives many more occasions to the teacher to teach what he wants to teach to her students.
(iv) Exercises:
Of course, an author of a book for the nursery class would give no exercises therein as the same are neither required nor desirable. A light beginning may be made at the kindergarten stage. In case of classes higher than of this stage, the exercises go on acquiring increasing importance.
The exercises are important for recapitulation or revision; recapitulation or revision consolidates the matter that has been read. A consolidated matter would have much longer retention as exercises, also help in making the point of learning further clear, and, depending upon the type of questions, the same may give different perspectives to the knowledge acquired by the child through the book.
Through exercises, the teacher may achieve objectives of different sorts. There should be exercise which makes the students recall the learnt matter; there should be exercises for the enhancement of students’ faculty for comprehension.
In case of the former, the questions will be such which make the students recall the facts read by them in the lesson, while in case of the latter, the students will have to read the matter thoroughly well so that they may understand the implied meaning or sense as well as the explicit meaning as to what the author means to convey.
There should be some thought-provoking questions also, the answers to which are not directly given in the lesson but the students will have to infer from what is given therein the lesson.
Such questions test the students’ ability to apply their knowledge in different situations; such questions help in developing the faculty to assess different situations with their similarities and dissimilarities with the situation that they are already so well-acquainted with.
Format of questions should also be of various sorts. For recall, there may be questions requiring students to fill in the blanks with the given words or grammatical terms or structures as each of them suits for an individual blank.
There may be questions with multiple choices to select an answer from, or, the students may be required to complete contextual sentences, or answer contextual questions recalling their knowledge of the lesson.
Then, there may be matching questions, too. ‘True” and “False” type questions are also sometimes asked. All these types of questions and, some of other types also may be asked to test the knowledge of the students.
In such a case, the questions will be based not on the matter of a lesson in a textbook or in a Supplementary Reader, but will be related to some item of Grammar, or, may be to test or enhance the ability of free expression.
Questions serve as a device to teach new items as well as the means to test what has been taught. Hence, a teacher needs to be well-skilled in the art of framing questions of different sorts. And, this ability is all the more required in the author of a book so that exercises of various sorts may be there to serve the purpose of recapitulation and testing the efficacy of teaching.
In some books, testing exercises are found to have been prepared with great skill, and they can help in achieving the objective of exercise in a proper way, and with full interest of the students in attempting the same.
Students, especially, of the lower classes may beneficially be required to do some sort of activity which needs the use of the knowledge or skill already acquired by them. The application of knowledge or skill consolidates the same, and, may even help in the further development of the same.
In case of nursery students, the befitting activity would be to colour the beautifully drawn letters of the alphabet or digits of the number. They may also be asked to write the first letter of the word labelling a picture. At a little later, they may be asked to fill in the blanks first with letters, and then with words.
At the upper primary and secondary levels, we may ask our students to verify facts given in a book of Science through some experiment. In teaching Geography, requisite amount of practical work can or should also be got done in the form of drawing some map, colouring the outline map of a country or state to show the different kinds of land surfaces or climatic or vegetation conditions, and so on.
In History, a chart may be made to show lineage of a dynasty; to show reforms in different fields—social, political, agricultural, industrial, economical, and so on.
To foster creativity, students may be made to speak a few sentences about some animal, some object—living or non-living, a personality of History, and so on. Oral or written competitions may be held to develop oral or written expression of the students.
The way of my holding the extempore speech competition had been to make my students come to my table one-by-one, to pick up one of the slips lying thereon, with a topic written on each of the slips; and the student had to start speaking on the same, extemporaneously. It was to avoid preparing for a topic through cramming.
Though, sometimes, a topic may be assigned to prepare on; the students would consult different sources, and collect matter to speak on the topic with a spirit of competition. Such a programme would inculcate the habit of preparing for a literary or artistic work, resulting in the enhancing of knowledge and skill.
The Project Method is also a method having an activity approach. This method is good for students of senior classes. John Dewey was a strong exponent of learning by doing. In India, Mahatma Gandhi introduced the Basic Education which is an education to be imparted co-relating the same to some activity.
Psychologically and pedagogically, the soundness of the approach was beyond doubt, though basic education failed in India because of our having been too much accustomed to a system which has been extremely bookish.
Basic Education demands that geographical facts regarding the climate and soil suitable for the production of cotton, should be taught while the students are being given practice in spinning on a takli, or on a charkha or in weaving on some loom, and so on.
Likewise, some relevant units of measuring lengths should also be taught along with the continuance of the activity. Therein lies the way to relieve our system of education from its extreme bookishness, and the importance of cramming that it has got. But we failed to conduct it in a proper way. I feel the computer based education would also be an education through activity.
Component # 3. The Learning Situation:
Physically, the classroom environment should be quite congenial; it should be rather pleasant for the learning kids. Of course, proper ventilation— provision for light and air, must be there. The students must feel comfortable in their classroom in every season whatsoever.
Their furniture should be of the size and shape according to their age. In some schools, I have seen students being required to remain sitting for eight periods, each not less than of 30 minutes’ duration, on stools with no provision of back-support.
It would cause earlier fatigue leading to distortion of posture, and the net result would be ill-health, and diversion from the lesson of the class, as the span of attention would be adversely affected.
Especially, the nursery class should be well-equipped with toys of different sorts which may serve as projects of attraction for the nimble kids to play with, as well as means for learning what the teacher deems as essential items of their curriculum. At the nursery and pre-nursery levels, the thrust is to be on the development of senses—eye, ear, nose, tongue and touch (skin).
A lot of such objects may be developed or procured, through which the resourceful teacher may teach the kids to recognise different colours; different shapes (circle, triangle, rectangle, square, and so on); different living and non-living objects; different letters of alphabets and digits of number—all in a play-way method; and all these are related to the sense of eye; and pictures and models should also be used abundantly to teach all these things.
A trained eye of the child can very well distinguish which is bigger, which is smaller and catch the slight difference that may be there between two objects in colour, shape or size. At a latter stage, the children may be made skilled in measuring different things through guess work only, with no instrument whatsoever.
Children like to produce sounds of different volumes and at different pitches—their ear may be trained in the grasping of niceties of sound through procuring musical instruments—initially the toys may serve as such for the playful kids, and later, some sorts of real musical instruments such as piano, flute, drum and so on, may be used with great benefit to the lot of learning students.
Video and audio cassettes may help a lot in the development of eye and ear. Some channels telecast wildlife on the screen of the television set; arrangements should be made for the students to be benefited by such programmes. For the same reason, drawing, music and dance should occupy important place in curricula of the primary level classes, too.
To the beginners at the nursery level, the teaching of letters should be commenced, and, in many schools, actually, it is so done with colouring differently the different letters. Then, out of a jumbled lot of letters of plastic, the children, one-by-one, may be asked to pick a particular letter, so on and so forth.
Distinguishing the roaring of lion from the howling of a wolf, of the shooting of an owl from the cooing of a dove being produced on an audio record, may be a very beneficial play for the primary level children.
In our school, we have masks, with which the tots may play different animals, and, they may be taught to produce voices of the same as well. For the same reason, visiting a zoo or a sanctuary is educationally highly beneficial.
Eyes and ears are the organs whose role is crucial in the process of teaching and learning—we will have to adopt the various means to develop the acuity of these senses. Sharp eyes will grasp things in less time and with more exactness. Likewise, the oral teaching of the teacher can be better grasped by those who have got an acute sense of hearing—in case of dictation by the teacher, only such a student can do well.
Playing different games may also help in the development of senses. On many occasions, more than one senses (organs) have to work simultaneously in co-ordination with one another. To use the term of Piaget, for the development of schemata, the school will have to be like some “smorgasbord” (John Holt) out of which the students should be free to select activities of their own liking.
In a good Montessori school, we may find the aid available for teaching what is hard, and what is soft; what is hot, and what is cold, so on and so forth. Thus, the sense of touch may be helped to be more acute.