For years, we have grown on the images of guru-shishya engaged in teaching-learning under the learning tree. From times immemorial, from Dronacharya to S Radhakrishnan, we have revered and romanticised the superhero status of a great teacher. Their students, in turn, made the teachers proud, giving the mentor-mentee relationships an alluring charm. Our history is replete with epic guru-shishya pairs like Eklavya and Dronacharya.
Today India has 320 million students in over 1 million schools, 30,000 colleges and 500 universities. The gross enrolment ratio is a measly 12.4% (87.6% students drop out before college). Employability rate is estimated at 25% (of those who make it to college, only 1 out of 4 graduates meet industry standards). As many as 25% of teachers are absent from work. Only 50% of teachers are actually engaged in the act of teaching, while at work. India faces a shortage of 1.2 million teachers! We have 30,000 institutes of higher learning and not 1 in top 100 globally! Something has going horribly wrong. To break the vicious cycle, we will need to start with the gardener, who must sow the virtuous seed?the teacher.
The classroom has evolved tremendously. After the various writing systems in ancient time, hornbooks came in 1400 in England and the US. The blackboards invaded classrooms only in 1801. Instructional TV and radio ruled the roost during 1940-90 when personal computers and internet took over. What next?
The die is cast. The classroom of the future will be wireless. The students may choose not to carry books?they won?t leave home without the tablets. Yes, the tablets will be all-pervasive. From KG to PG, the student will be connected real-time to his teacher. The content delivery will be automated. The assessments will be online and the classroom will often be outside the four walls of the institution. The good news is that we can produce the rockstar teachers of the future. Let?s sing ?Calling Elvis?.
Confucius rightly said, ?I hear and I forget. I see and I believe. I do and I understand.? We need to bring back learning experiences to the classroom. This requires, as Dr Michael Bridges from iCarnegie who spent 25 years at Carnegie Mellon University would say, seven principles of learning: Prior Knowledge, Organisation of Knowledge, Motivation, Mastery, Practice and Feedback, Student Development & Classroom Climate and Metacognition. All of this boils down to a student-centric learning. This transition from teacher-centric teaching is not just imminent but an unstoppable reality.
A teacher is trainable. The future does not need fountain-heads of knowledge and superhero teachers of yore. The knowledge will be digitised on the tablet, available on call! But synthesising and organising that knowledge will not be easy. And for effective and purposeful synthesising, the good-old teacher will always be required. And only the teacher can start the virtuous cycle with an inspired student wanting to be like his teacher, leading to better student outcomes. Better life skills and employability skills will lead to greater success of these students leading to more children inside schools and colleges, more fees and revenues and eventually higher wages and growing teachers. The search for excellence in Indian education must start inside the classrooms?with the teacher.
Winston Churchill said, ?The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.? Can India, with its youth bulge of 600 million, build it? All we need is a million rockstars for this army.
The author is founder & CEO of Aspire Human Capital Management
