Shiv Kumar Padha
It is not an exaggeration if I say that Jammu and Kashmir state is lucky enough to have an agile and energetic education minister who, from the very first day after taking over the reins of education department in hands, launched a campaign against the mismanagement and disorder prevalent there. His resolve and pledge to set the education department in order and to bring it again on rails is laudable and has been appreciated especially by the parents of the students. Every effort in the pursuit of streamlining the department is appreciable and in the right direction. It is said that ‘a single swallow cannot make summer but the commitment and sincere efforts have belied the truth. But inspite of all efforts the ground level reality of the Government run schools is entirely terrifying and topsy-turvy than what is apparently visible to the administration. Majority of the government school teachers are playing havoc with the lives of innocent children. The working culture of the majority of our government schools in the state is unbelievable, amazing and shocking.
Recently, the national TV channels did a Herculean job in exposing the menace of mass scale copying in the country and the educational standard of 12th class toppers from Bihar who could neither pronounce nor tell the meanings of their subjects correctly like Inglis for English, Jugrafy for geography, Hestrie for History and Prodigal Sanus for political science which according to the topper meant Khana Pakayee. It has not only opened the eyes of the countrymen but has also brought the whole educational system of the country and of the state under scanner. Feeling dejected by the educational scenario prevalent in the state I cannot help sharing the experiences which I have accumulated as a result of my association with the teacher education.
Comparing the educational standard of 12th class toppers from Bihar with that of majority of government school teachers in Jammu and Kashmir we find the later at the lowest ebb in spite of the fact that they are being paid a handsome monthly salary. The in depth supervisions, inspections, monitoring and interaction with the teachers revealed that majority of them are almost quite at sea in the subjects they have been teaching, instances they do not have the basic knowledge about rudiments of Science, Mathematics, Geography, Geometry. They are unable to speak, write or translate English used in daily life. There are, for instance, some alarming facts which came to the fore during the inspections and the training programs of the in service school teachers which revealed unbelievable truth, leaving few, the teachers do not know even the alphabets of Geometry and Geography in spite of the fact that each school of the state has been supplied with sufficient teaching and learning material needed for all the school subjects. The globes, maps and geometry boxes and their use in the class room is all Greek to them. They do not have any idea about directions, about effects of daily and annual rotation of the earth, latitudes, longitudes, continents, seas and the oceans and other which an ordinary man has. Not to talk of their knowledge about fundamentals of geometry, the teachers can neither name, identify the implements contained in the geometry boxes nor do they know about their use.
Geometry is an integral and an important part of Mathematics and Geography that of Social Sciences but both of these subjects are gradually becoming extinct from the school curriculum. The teachers either by pass these subject or they teach them half heartedly in the class room. This is hundred dollar question the answer for which can be explored from their conscious that how do their conscious allow them to cheat the innocent students and their parents who send their children to school to receive quality education. It is disgusting and amazing as well that how do these teachers have been carrying on such criminal practice unnoticed under the nose of the immediate heads of their institution and the authorities. It is surprising that our students feel proud keeping the costliest mobile phones in their pockets, consuming hundreds of rupees fuel in their motorbikes but do not feel the necessity of purchasing the most important geo box or dictionary needed for learning geometry and English language in the class room. The knowledge of English and that of the grammar is not encouraging either, it is both grim and gloomy. A few teachers can frame ordinary and simple English sentences. They have no knowledge about the use of tenses, idioms, phrases, proverbs. The teachers are found quite at sea in mathematics subject also. They feel handicapped while distinguishing between natural numbers, whole numbers, integers, prime and composite numbers, decimal system and its use in mathematics. They can be knocked down easily by giving simple problem on profit and loss, simple multiplication of decimals, and that of fractions. The Government is sparing no efforts in equipping the schools with qualified staff, material and infrastructure. There is no scarcity of funds, the teachers are being paid handsome salaries but still there are some black sheep who, instead of doing justice are hell bent on playing with the lives of the innocent children. The time has come to start a joint crusade against the erring teachers, identifying them and weeding them out from the system instead of giving cosmetic treatment to the department. Quality of class room teaching depends upon quality and commitment of the teachers and not on the number of rooms and army of incapable teachers.
It is my humble submission that, instead of giving periodical screening tests to the teachers, a secret survey of the Government schools must be conducted in order to identify the schools suffering from the habit of truancy, ascertain the number of the students who do not possess Geometry boxes, prepare a list of schools where the Geometry and the Geography are never taught, identify the teachers who discourage the geometry teaching in their schools and the modus operandi they used in justifying the evaluation of the answer sheets of the subject which they have never taught in the schools. The heads of these schools must be brought to the book for the dereliction of their duties. The department should tighten the noose around such erring teachers and headmasters so that the fellow teachers learn a lesson from them.
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