Karnataka - Udupi   

Competition spreading inferiority complex in children: academic

By Our Staff Correspondent

UDUPI, MARCH 22. B.M. Hegde, former Vice-Chancellor of Manipal Academy of Higher Education, said here on Monday that teachers should introspect on the teaching methods employed by them. He was speaking as chief guest at the inauguration of a national seminar-cum-workshop on "Improving the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom''.

Prof. Hegde said a recent symposium in London concluded that education could be improved by allowing students to learn for themselves, providing them with infrastructure for learning and protecting them from teachers. To reverse the situation, teachers should sympathise with students and encourage them to debate various issues. Unfortunately in India, students were being graded from the kindergarten level. This only increased inferiority complex in those not scoring good grades. Instead, students should be inculcated with the capacity to excel in themselves. Instead of competing with others, a student should compete with himself. Teachers should arouse curiosity among students, he added.

In his inaugural address, Ramdas Pai, President of MAHE, said development, competence and quality, accepted as the slogan of the workshop, were interconnected. Education was not accumulation of knowledge. Neither was it a simple development of certain skills by which a person could live successfully. The activities associated with any educational intervention ought to develop an individual into a mature human being who understood his or her ways of living in relation to the existing society. So developing an individual into an effective and successful person was an important objective of education. Developing competence was the most important. An individual needed competence to live in a society which was fast changing. Increase in competence of any student or showing him or her methods of developing competence was what educational institutions and teachers should do. With proliferation of a large number of educational institutions, quality of education had suffered. Every institution should look at quality from different perspectives. Quality of management, teacher, infrastructure, syllabus, classroom work and individual performances would guarantee quality in tertiary education, Dr. Pai added.

Presiding over the function, the Registrar of the Academy of General Education, K.K. Pai, said quality of teaching and learning was in the hands of teachers. Since the universities had a say in this matter, they should decide on quality, he said.

Ganapati Bhat, Principal of MGM College, was present.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka

News: Front Page | National | Tamil Nadu | Andhra Pradesh | Karnataka | Kerala | New Delhi | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary | Updates: Breaking News |

Stories in this Section

• Tight security in naxal-affected areas
• Competition spreading inferiority complex in children: academic
• `Competition spreading inferiority complex'

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu