KARACHI: Teachers asked to make learning more interactive
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, June 29: Speakers on the concluding day of a three-day symposium on ‘Understanding Quality Education’ urged teachers to increase their outreach and open up to students. One of the two working groups on Wednesday observed that learning in classrooms today had become an individualistic activity.
The existing school system pushes students towards selfishness, greed, competition and domination, which badly affects the intrinsic goodness and creativity of students, it was summed up.
Speakers viewed that sharing with, and assisting and collaborating with fellow learners were primarily done in a mechanistic and a superficial way.
Teachers treat the learners mostly as subordinates, and their learning potentials remain unexplored as far as their interaction with other learners, parents and the community is concerned, it was observed.
The sessions engaged the participants in the process of reflecting and rethinking the role of education and schools in the process of reclaiming what had been suppressed, degraded and ‘corrupted’ for so long.
The discussions were aimed at making preparations on how transformative measures could be generated within schools to challenge the existing hegemonic discourses on education system.
Participants of the group, who were mostly schoolteachers, deliberated on what learning was and how students learnt.
Testing or examinations at schools creates a sense of competition among students, but at the same time it can be taken as a tool to assess what teachers have been able to deliver to students under a fixed syllabi and time frame, said some teachers.
They stressed the need for brining in changes to ensure a system that encouraged questioning among students and allowed teachers to go with the ability and mood of the students.
A couple of speakers noted that teachers were not organized as far as their own education or updating of information was concerned.
Unless they find some time to acquire latest knowledge in their respective subject and to interact with their colleagues and other capable persons, any honest treatment to children at school can hardly be observed.
The group work on ‘Dimensions of learning’ was facilitated by Dr Usha Nayar, Prof Abbas Hussain, Yasmin Bano and Mashhood Rizvi.
Earlier, during a panel discussion, Prof Peter McLaren of the USA expressed views on issues like the rigidity of the current educational system and how it had gathered the tendency only to indoctrinate or commercialize students.
He also discussed how societies had to simply begin realizing their local values and respect the indigenous knowledge systems.
Syed Raza Kazim, a lawyer, reflected on the inflexibility of the existing education system, which bred disrespect for indigenous knowledge systems and social and moral values.
