It is essential to build the right mindset in the kid from school itself. It is universally understood that it is important to inculcate right morals, values and mindsets in kids from a young age. Today, many Indian urban parents have worked abroad. While working abroad in many developed countries they might have come across this viewpoint that the student is the future citizen of the country. For a better county in future you need to school the children well today.
In most advanced countries school education is free. It is considered an important investment into the future of the country. Also, free school education is reason for charging taxes by the government. The purpose of schooling is not to build brilliance but to provide basic proficiency in a variety of subjects and also create a proper environment for the proper development of every child in the school. Attitudes and habits take long time to build.
School is an institution that can build the right attitudes and habits in children by years of efforts by maintaining a good culture. While not all kids are expected to become brilliant and talented, the purpose of school is to make most kids into future good citizens with good morals and values.
Teaching is considered a noble profession in India. Due to Indian culture of treating non-material outlook as superior approach, where a person focused on spiritual upliftment and performing a duty in non-commercial terms is considered superior and noble person. There is history for this, that we need to first understand.
In ancient Indian civilization the teacher was not a commercial person and lot of respect is given to the teacher – the acharya. In fact, only at the end of the school graduation it was a social norm to make a gift to the teacher. This gift to teacher was not a fixed amount that was left to the will and wish of the student and their parent. It was more cultural norm rather than something required by law.
The acharya would not remove a student for non-payment of fees. The Acharya is more respected than another form of teacher the Upadhaya because, the Acharya is not trading education for a fee. While the Upadhyaya offers education for a fee and is quite a notch lower in social stature.
With money-minded school, the management becomes the decision maker and the supervisor for the teachers. The management establishes who teachers should behave and do their work. A money-minded school owner is primarily motivated by profits and manipulating the parents expectations to charge higher fees. When such a person becomes the boss of the teachers, it is very difficult to imagine them either inspiring teachers to be come better individuals or to perform teaching as a moral responsibility to develop the next generation.
Teachers are also not stupid. Over a few months or years – teachers can understand the intentions of the school owner. Teacher either feel suffocated to leave or change themselves to follow the dictates of the school owner ignoring imparting values to children. Basically, the teacher in a fancy private school has no leverage to make any significant changes to the school.
With the school owner coming up with new ways to charge higher fee from parents by creating various perceptions. They will impose these programs on the teacher. Thereby affecting the academic calendar and learning abilities of the children. Simple example is various sports days, school science exhibitions and annual days have become good events to showcase the fancy private school for admissions to new children by impressing their parents.
As each fancy schools tries to create better impressions, the investment in the stage and decoration increases. After all, many parents go by visual symbols of quality – it is not easy to judge quality of the teaching in a school.
Today is quite common to have classes with 25 to 35 kids. While it is attractively packaged as better student teacher ratio. As a parent, you also need to understand that this is a way to get more mediocre people to become teachers. It requires less competence to handle 30 kids rather than 55 kids. So it is quite common to have teachers without proper education related degrees (D.Ed, B.ED, M.ED) working as school teachers in fancy schools.
Today, any front office receptionist will become an ideal teacher in a fancy private school – they have the confidence to manage the parent, the appearance, dressing etiquette and the personality to create a positive experience. This is the unfortunate truth. So can we really expect such personalities to be role models for the school children, when they have no proper background or training in education.
The school teacher remains but a mute spectator and observer having no say in the education system that is imposed on them by the very commercially minded school management. In such a situation, the day is not far – when the noble profession of teacher will be treated no different than any other routine job. Because once the teacher is not focused on inculcating proper values and developing the children to their full abilities, then there is not much difference between the school bus driver and the school teacher.