Two weeks back we started to discuss how the socio-psychological positioning of the teacher has taken a beating and changed for the worse in the eyes of the public over the years. We said that students these days no longer respect their teachers as we did not too long ago. They are more prone to showing attitude rather than gratitude in their interactions with their teachers. To say that this has a huge impact on the orientation of teachers towards their profession would be making a huge understatement. At one time, teachers saw their work as a vocation. Much has changed in this regard for various reasons that cannot really be attributed to teachers alone. Let us analyse this further here.
Generational differences
One factor that has changed both the terrain and nature of interaction between the teacher and the student is the digital revolution seen especially in advances in Information and Telecommunications Technology (ICT). Taking us back to the “then and now” framework, many of our pre-millennials will recall that we were fascinated when teachers (and/or elders) talked about or shared with us things that we didn’t know about. I remember how I was absolutely fascinated when I first learnt that there were different types of monkeys. I was in class 3 at the time as an older student shared photos of three different types of monkeys. One was orange, the other enormous and black and a third looked like a naughty child. This third one, he said, was a Chingpunjee.
He was in Class 7 – a senior, so what he said was taken at face value. It was only later when a cousin of mine cruelly corrected me about my pronunciation that I realised that was a Chimpanzee or a Chimp. Sometime later, I learnt that the first great ape launched into space on January 31, 1961, was a Chimp called Ham. That was the beginning of my fascination with monkeys. A comic series that was hugely popular among us at the time was called The Phantom. This still appears daily in our very own The Fiji Times. I was lucky because a grandfather of mine (Satya Narayan Tata) was an avid fan of The Phantom and had a huge collection in his room. That was the hoard that I raided whenever I visited my grannies at the Morris Hedstrom’s Store in Wairiki.
There are a number of features that stand out in the two popular comic series of the time – Tarzan and The Phantom. Both highlighted man’s relationship with nature. The main protagonist in The Phantom was a white man who lived in the deep woods among black African tribes. He set contextualised rules, policed and adjudicated among them in his role as their guarantor of peace. He was educated, had a wife who worked at the United Nations, and most importantly, he espoused values that would still be widely considered to be virtuous today. The Phantom was a teetotaller and always ordered milk at taverns and bars whenever he left the deep woods and visited cities on important missions.
He was deeply dedicated to his wife and gave her the personal space to pursue her career as she allowed him to pursue his. Both respected the fact that she was an international career bureaucrat and he a well-meaning jungle dweller/leader. They had twin children (a boy and a girl) and agreed to let them have both formal and informal education. The twins were trained in the ways of the wild before attending established institutions of learning in metropolitan cities. The son was later enrolled at a famed monastery in Tibet to help develop his character. Lessons about teaching and learning are difficult to overlook in The Phantom series. What I want to highlight here is the special focus on man’s relationship with nature.
The Phantom had a special island, aptly named Eden, set aside for endangered species. On that island he had wildcats living together with their own prey. This was made possible by training the carnivorous cats to feed on fish rather than red meat. He had two especially trained dolphins helping in feeding the cats. In another interesting twist he found a wild pre-historic primate whom he moved to Eden. Later he found that this creature was deeply unhappy because his mate had been left behind. The Phantom found that mate and reunited them as he further cemented the natural bliss and happiness that pervaded Eden. We devoured these tales of discovering and peacefully co-existing with nature and eagerly waited for more.
This fascination with nature has waned alarmingly in recent times. The National Geographic magazine that we used to compete for, is not even recognised and given a wide berth by our children. Sir David Attenborough has receded into the mists of time as TV programs featuring the wild have dropped in ratings to the extent that it is difficult to find them. Those fascinating and highly informative UNESCO/UNICEF clips that used to precede movies in the local cinemas have simply disappeared from the scene. Those were key sources of information that have been deemed meaningless and useless by later generations because they don’t seem to have any value. There appears to have been a marked shift towards viewing information and knowledge in terms of their usefulness for personal use or progress. Anything that doesn’t fit the bill is best left ignored and/or discarded. This brings us back to the teacher as a key source of information and learning.
With advances in ICT, the teacher’s centrality as the main source of new information and learnings continues to be downgraded. Students no longer get wowed by new knowledge as they can at the flick of a finger, fact check what the teacher is trying to share with them. In a class just this week, while discussing China’s foreign policy, I mentioned the special role played by “Wolf Warriors” in China’s global designs. There was very little heightened interest from the class as I explained this phenomenon. I could see a few flicks on the phones and then it was back to the usual poker-faced vacant staring. Then I relayed to them how Taiwanese diplomats were manhandled by Chinese officials at a local hotel right here in Suva while the Fiji police looked on. This is when interest was finally aroused.
There are important lessons in the example just shared. A key challenge that teachers face these days is to first arouse student interest on a topic and then to hold it long enough to get the message across. Moreover, the teacher must be able to convey the learning better than Wikipedia, Google or any other online sources. This is where modern tools of teaching and learning have moved into the space between the teacher and the student. The biggest challenge is to first gain attention and then to convince the students as to why they need to learn whatever is on board for the day.
This has an interesting psychological twist to it because contemporary students want to know if what they are being taught is of direct importance in getting through a course. There is very little room for additional or wider learning. There is a total rejection of the importance of wider knowledge around the subject area. This instrumental orientation towards learning has a stunting effect on the whole framework of teaching and learning. It also works towards watering down the rigour required in test-based assessments as students demand a Test Brief and then more Briefs followed by Hints. Failure to comply leads to negative reactions at best and complaints at worst.
We’ll develop this further next week.
- Dr Subhash Appanna is a senior USP academic who has been writing regularly on issues of historical and national significance. The views expressed here are his alone and not necessarily shared by this newspaper or his employers subhash.appana@usp.ac.fj
