Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Teach reading

NCERT director Krishna Kumar has hit the nail on the head when he says that the need of the hour in education is attention to primary classes and better teacher training (“Our methods for teaching of reading are quite obsolete,” The Hindu, Jan. 22.) Undoubtedly, the existing method of collective chanting of the alphabet does not motivate the individual student. It only traumatises the kids. As Professor Krishna Kumar says, apt primary teacher training will surely help the kids, enabling them to obtain the moral and intellectual fruits of our system of primary education.

N. RadhaKrishnan,

Chennai

The interview with Professor Krishna Kumar brought to mind an incident that occurred in the early 1990s. A student in the department where I worked, who had just completed his Ph.D., informed me that he had got a job as a resource person in a nearby college. I congratulated him and told him that the position would afford him a good opportunity to learn the subject more thoroughly. He responded by saying that unlike in the universities, there was no teaching in colleges and that only notes had to be dictated. Then I said he could prepare good notes. He replied that notes already prepared by senior colleagues were available. As Prof. Yash Pal mentioned, “teaching succeeds when it offers a taste of understanding.” The pity is, nobody wants to experience that taste.

T.P. Srinivasan,

Madurai

The NCERT director has put it very mildly. There is hardly any reading (other than textbooks) taught, encouraged or insisted upon at the school and college level. I have had some experience of guiding candidates appearing for various interviews where one of the questions is: “Tell us something about the books you have recently read.” Believe me, only a few came up with the name of a single book they had read.

Reading of books other than textbooks must be an integral part of the core curriculum at least at the higher secondary school level.

Col. C.V. Venugopalan (retd.),

Palakkad

Schools need to focus more on their children “learning to read” (up to Class V, at least). Only then should the children be allowed to move into “reading to learn” levels. The education system must be built on this solid foundation. Only then can we create minds that can “outsource and not be outsourced.” Actually, when we look at the objectives of the school curriculum it does cover all the issues; the problem is at the delivery stage. The entire system is chasing numbers (marks), not knowledge. It is time we took the issue seriously.

Benedict Gnaniah,

Chennai

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