Many teachers ‘out of date’

MANY well-qualified teachers were out of date because they were still using patterns of thought of a previous generation, Professor R. G. Macmillan, Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Natal, told the Rhodesia Teachers’ Association annual conference here today.

He also called for the lifting of the “crushing burden” on teachers of chores, which they should not have to perform.

Schools would have to become larger to meet the new needs in education, but many people still felt that any enlargement would be “uneducational”.

“I consider it wrong to make categorical statements that small classes are good and large classes are bad.

“You can have 500 kids at a cinema and they all see the film. Should only small numbers hear a great singer or great preacher? Of course not, yet you will never hear educationists admit this,” he said.

Teacher shortage was a signal of educational disaster, but there were means of fighting the problem. Parttime teaching in certain cases should form part of any well-organised system, married women could be an integral part on any school system and should be recognised as part of the total professional team.

“I am strongly in favour of only fully-trained teachers teaching children, I forecast that the battle will be a losing one in which the auxiliary will be bound, in time, to work in professional area.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

◆ Due to technological advancements, children now assess raw data from the Internet, so the teacher’s role is to turn that raw data into knowledge, hence the need for teachers to be technologically-prepared.

◆ The teacher also has to be technologically-apt so as to be able to move at the same speed with the students. Teaching and learning has become more interactive than never before. It is also not time bound, because if a student misses an online class at a certain time, he/she can still go through it later. ◆ Learning is slowly becoming virtual. If the teacher relies on the textbook alone, he/she will soon lose relevance because information in the textbook is in most cases behind the information on the Internet.

◆ The information superhighway brought about by the information revolution, challenges the role of a teacher especially those who rely on traditional teaching methods.

◆ An upgraded teacher improves service delivery, and can be reached by many.

◆ The drive to review and upgrade the curriculum should also include teachers’ retraining to meet the requirements of the curriculum. For historical information contact: Zimpapers Knowledge Centre at Herald House on: +263 8677 004323; +263 0242 795771