Teaching: Still Noble or Technology Driven?

ज्ञानशक्तिसमारूढः तत्त्वमालाविभूषितः ।
भुक्तिमुक्तिप्रदाता च तस्मै श्रीगुरवे नमः ॥

“Salutation to that noble Guru, who is established in the power of knowledge, adorned with the garland of various principles and is the bestower of prosperity and liberation.”

Many a times I reminisce my childhood days with my sister and laugh over the funny and innocent moments that we shared together. The other day as we talked about the games that we played as children, my sister recollected my most favourite activity, or rather my ritual as a child-  my daily ritual of playing ‘Teacher Teacher’ every morning before leaving for school in the afternoon. Some of my soft toys used to be my ‘students’ who regularly attended my classes and dared not ask me any doubts! A blackboard and boxes of chalks used to be my treasured possessions to help me ‘facilitate’ this childhood passion. This constructive hobby of teaching helped me revise my lessons and helped me hone my communication skills. My parents are particularly proud of my teaching habit, even today. They think it was one of the useful ways to learn and remember things. Though a number of years have passed since I bade Ciao to my favourite hobby and I chose a different career other than teaching, deep down in my heart it still remains one of my most admired and honourable professions.

A couple of days back, one of the guest speakers whom I listened to said, “I learnt most of the financial concepts on Google and never relied only on my faculty.” Though most of us today turn to Google to solve our gravest of the grave queries and get instant answers, I reflected if really internet is capable of replacing a human teacher. When I asked this question to myself, I got both Yes and No as answers, given the transition in education that I have witnessed so far. During my previous semester, I studied the Education Sector of India. While reading through various statistics, I came across the fact that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Multimedia are going to be the growth drivers in the Education Sector, though presently their contribution to the Education sector is merely 0.6%. If such technology is adopted in schools, it would, to some extent reduce the efforts required to teach the students. Blackboards and chalks would soon be replaced with white boards, projectors and computers. I wonder how learning can be fun by just looking at the technology aided slides and pictures. Learning would become monotonous and dull. I still remember my school days when my teachers took great pains to make us understand concepts using globes, scientific models and the extensive writing on blackboards! We were far from technology and thus enjoyed the personal touch and attention of our beloved teachers. 

I am of the opinion that though internet can make valuable additions to our bags of knowledge and wisdom, it can never be a substitute to a teacher’s valuable experience which he or she imparts during the course of education. I believe education is not simply gathering and processing information but it also a way of thinking and implementing ideas in a proper direction. And only teachers in form of guiding lights can help us achieve that, with their prowess of teaching.

As I am fond of languages, I believe that a teacher plays an important role in developing to speak and write a language. It is similar to mothers teaching their children to speak their respective mother tongues well. I recently had a difference of opinion over this with my beloved sister. As she is learning French, she often uses various translation websites to frame sentences and learn new words. Having proudly formed a number of sentences using the translation websites, she said, “Nowadays internet has made learning foreign languages so easy. One can easily master any language without a teacher!” I shared with her my experience of writing letters in German in my initial learning years, using translation websites. The outcome of such drudgery used to be horrendous and grammatically nightmarish. Only when I used to get a number of red correction marks from my teacher on those letters of mine, did I realize how indispensable my teachers were! All the languages that I learnt so far, learning them was fun only because of the way my teachers taught them. That is why I believe that languages can be learnt better only if they have a human touch to correct them when erred and thus helps us to learn the language in a fun way. And for persons like me who finds subjects like Mathematics scary, learning it on computers or through internet, can make numbers appear scarier than ever!

As Teachers’ Day soon approaches I feel indebted to all my teachers, right from Kindergarten till my MBA, who gave a soothing touch to difficult subjects as well as made interesting subjects even more interesting with their passion and experience of years of teaching. These sagacious minds are like sculptors who contributed greatly in molding my mindset.

No doubt, that online lectures and videos play a crucial role in educating a mass number of people and contributes towards enrichment given the paucity of time people face, to attend a class; I believe that a classroom experience is like no other. That is because, online learning makes the process of learning one way or rather myopic, while a teacher in a classroom can make you think and help you to brainstorm the ideas, thus bringing out creativity in each student. Ideas evolve and revolution of thoughts happen only when discussed with wise minds like teachers. I fear we might soon miss out on all this if teaching becomes a passé as the technology improves and more and more students turn to the internet for gaining information and thus overlooking knowledge in the process.

 In India, though teaching is perceived as a low paying job and hence there is not much rush by youngsters towards the profession, I believe that teaching is the noblest of all professions as it empowers a person to enlighten millions of minds in the career span. What can be a better service to society than this? If a teacher can kindle even one mind with his or her candle of knowledge, the light is then spread to thousands and millions of other minds!

As the fear of technology taking over teachers and books concerns me, I remember the story ‘The Fun They Had’ by Isaac Asimov wherein the children in the year 2157 are in an era of mechanical teachers to submit their homework and learn lessons and are completely oblivious to the concept of human teachers and books. The children in the story envied the fun which their forefathers had in schools. I think we are slowly and steadily moving towards that era which Isaac Asimov contemplated in his story. A time may soon come when the upcoming generations would too long for actually going to schools and may miss out the fun with their friends while learning! Therefore by preserving the culture of teaching which we inherited from our mythologies centuries ago, we will not only be preventing unemployment for many but also we will be attempting to keep human touch alive and not transforming the process of learning and teaching from human to robotic.