Parents and teachers are the two closest and best
factors in a child’s ultimate growth, who are mutually bound by a purely
unselfish common thread of an earnest desire to see the young child/pupil go
ahead of them in life, to prosper and flourish better than they have done.
Such thinking, it goes without saying, is only natural
for the parents, because it is based on their shared love with the child due to
emotional, traditional and biological reasons. In the case of a teacher, the same
intense concern for the child is based on profession as a mission, which
establishes that teaching, by its very nature, is a process of enabling and
empowering a child into a fine human being and better citizen of tomorrow. In
this sense, teaching is purely a service, a missionary act, rather than an
occupation which is always mercenary. That is why a teacher is called a
gardener who nurtures his saplings with all the loving care he can afford.
It needs, however, to be borne in mind, that the analogy
of parents and teachers on an identical attitude towards their wards cannot be
stretched too far. It’s a fact that for parents, their ward is the best and,
therefore, he must claim all the 100% of his teacher. But, for the teacher, it
is always a set of students being treated as wards and which changes every year,
who have to be taken care of and, therefore, every child of a particular year
simply takes 100% attention of his. He
has to treat every student in analytical and comparative terms in relation to
his classmates, since all of them are born with different talents and interests
and capacities, and they have to be attended to and served as per their needs,
resulting in their assessment on a scale of comparative ratings.
Parents need to understand and realize such practical
problems being faced by teachers and refrain themselves from blaming teachers
for not giving their best to their ward. Parents and teachers need to develop
strong mutual faith and trust in each other for the best monitoring of the
children. Constant interaction between the two is the only best method to
develop such trust as it used to be some 50 years ago. What has happened to the age-old valuable
bond of mutual respect and trust between parents and teachers after all? It can
be put down to two major changes in today’s society (a) impact of computer based rapidly growing
technology and (b) ever increasing need of parents to go out to work. Both
these factors have widened the generation gap between parents and children on
the one hand, between the children and their teachers on the other, thereby
progressively thinning down of interaction between parents and teachers.
Technology has so powerfully impacted the raw young generation
that they love to spend their time more and more with cell phones and internet which
provides them all sorts of information on all subjects, that they do not feel
the need to consult their parents regarding their problems and prefer to listen
to their like-minded peer groups instead of their teachers/parents. They also
take advantage of the fact that parents and teachers belong to an old world and
are not well-versed in today’s technology as they are. Naturally, the image of
the parents and teachers and their regard for them, have gone down in the eyes
of the young generation, leading to a
blame-game among all three stake-holders of education of children, viz,
students, parents and teachers. Dissatisfaction is writ large on everybody’s face
that children are not learning well or are not being taught well.
The only panacea available to us to bridge the
generation gap and bring about an equilibrium in school sphere lies in adoption
of the latest technology by parents and teachers who should use it habitually
like the young ones do. In other words both must change with change of time. It
will restore elders’ image in their eyes and elders will be able to monitor
students better and faster. On the parallel lines, parents will be able to
frequently interact with teachers through mail, Facebook and other channels to
update themselves about the progress of their wards at convenience. After all,
parents and teachers owe a great responsibility to enrich the society by
contributing exemplary citizens to it.
Commander VK Banga
Chairman IPSC &
Principal
The Mann School, Delhi -110082
...very well placed sir,,,change is the only thing, constant in this world and to be with the fast pace of this changing world we must change and update ourselves... thanks for your valuable words..
ReplyDeleteSir...being a teacher and a parent ... when I introspect.. I realise that technology has made the life easy by taking most of our valuable time which could otherwise be invested in giving the right direction to our children so that they can smoothly walk on the bumpy road of life ahead.
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