Its convenient!
SUJATA C
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For many teaching is not a vocation anymore.
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A. M. Faruqui
Vaidehi can't wait for her second child to turn three so that she can enrol him in school and she can take up a teaching job in the same school. Then she can go to school with her children and come back with them too. She will not only make some money (how nice!), she can also escape the deafening silence she will have to face at home once her husband and kids are off for the day. She will have vacation when the kids have vacation. What a convenient profession!
Luckily there are new schools sprouting all over the city so employment is assured. It is said that at least 50 per cent of teachers are untrained. When the school management is questioned they say that it is very difficult to get qualified teachers and they are forced to request mothers of students to join as teachers.
Shortage of teachers is a serious problem even in countries like the U.K. and the U.S. so the authorities in the U.S. have made it mandatory for schools to tell parents when students are being taught a certain subject by an untrained teacher.
Authorities in India have made no such promise. And so we have untrained teachers who wield the red pen and make parrots out of children. Tuition teachers coach three-year-old students to take the entrance tests to LKG. One child who went for such a class returned with bruises on his arms and legs. When confronted, the tuition teacher said, " he refuses to write ABCD and answer in English!"
When will this madness end? When will teaching stop being a convenient profession?
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