It is rather a mixed experience to be a teacher.
On the one side, there are many great stories of considering teaching as a noble profession and how it transforms students. a teacher being given a more important position than a parent. good incidents are always there.
on the other side, there are so many criticisms. the height of criticism is from Bernard Shaw. "a person who knows what to do will go ahead and do it. a person who does not know what to do will go ahead and teach". can we ask for a better criticism than this?
May be we can reason out from the famous symbol of yin and yang.
When there is total darkness, lights starts to fill. and when there is only light, darkness starts to engulf. An amazing graphic representation of a profound concept.
In the days of guru's, the guru was an expert. expert in every sense or at least to the local community. naturally the respect from society and eventually from the students. There are only 2 choices. learn from the guru by what ever means. some how earn the good will of the guru. the other choice is to self-learn.
Some guru's tend to misuse this privilege and that leads to people without expertise to enter this forte.
A person with expertise will generally have more or less committed his/her life for the cause. for people who do not commit their life, it is just a means of life. quality slowly fades away.
Then comes the books. books in printed format slowly throws away the need for expertise. Students and society look for people having access to books. books that are neither affordable nor reachable. The hay days of people without expertise.
So, how does a common man identify or evaluate a good teacher. This leads to institutionalization of education. At least a community and a well defined system can bring in some discipline and away with pretenders.
Even this cant for long. Now, the community or the institution gets an upper hand. commercialization of education sets in.
Once again evolution takes over. What you sow is what you harvest. of course it happens across generation. The holy grail of internet steps in.
With the advent of internet, the need for books are no more relevant and eventually the relevance of a teacher. a teacher without expertise in this context. This leads to lack of trust in institutionalization of education.
Going by the trend and applying yin and yang philosophy, we may predict that the days of guru are in the offing.
The likes of Sal Khan (khan academy), vsauce, veritasium, engineering made simple, brian douglas and many more. In such an institutionalized world, individuals are taking center stage. unbelievable.
Add to this sugata mitra's grandma pedagogy. just keep saying "i never knew how to do that". Just motivation.
The only difference is that the gurus of early days where local celebrities but now the gurus are global celebrities.
A teacher of today has to aspire to be a global guru.
And what happens to educational institutions. let us compare an industry and educational institution. Apart from buildings, people with different skills sets, machines etc, there seems to be only one differentiation.
It is just a matter of survival. Industry has a product and strives to keep the secrets. Educational institution has the objective of sharing knowledge and tries to keep it open.
May be a balanced approach would be for educational institutions to create prototypes or proof of concepts and industry may focus on commercialization. May be that is the bridge. The bridge that helps students to cross over to employment in the respective industry. Better still cross over to the adventurous land of entrepreneurship.
So, a modern day teacher should be capable enough to interact with the industry, build a bridge and get the students to know that there are bridges across, leading to the land of opportunities. Hence the name teacherpreneur.
To the preneur list of entrepreneur, technopreneur and edupreneur, we have managed to add studentpreneur and now teacherpreneur.
Evolution takes over again......
On the one side, there are many great stories of considering teaching as a noble profession and how it transforms students. a teacher being given a more important position than a parent. good incidents are always there.
on the other side, there are so many criticisms. the height of criticism is from Bernard Shaw. "a person who knows what to do will go ahead and do it. a person who does not know what to do will go ahead and teach". can we ask for a better criticism than this?
May be we can reason out from the famous symbol of yin and yang.
When there is total darkness, lights starts to fill. and when there is only light, darkness starts to engulf. An amazing graphic representation of a profound concept.
In the days of guru's, the guru was an expert. expert in every sense or at least to the local community. naturally the respect from society and eventually from the students. There are only 2 choices. learn from the guru by what ever means. some how earn the good will of the guru. the other choice is to self-learn.
Some guru's tend to misuse this privilege and that leads to people without expertise to enter this forte.
A person with expertise will generally have more or less committed his/her life for the cause. for people who do not commit their life, it is just a means of life. quality slowly fades away.
Then comes the books. books in printed format slowly throws away the need for expertise. Students and society look for people having access to books. books that are neither affordable nor reachable. The hay days of people without expertise.
So, how does a common man identify or evaluate a good teacher. This leads to institutionalization of education. At least a community and a well defined system can bring in some discipline and away with pretenders.
Even this cant for long. Now, the community or the institution gets an upper hand. commercialization of education sets in.
Once again evolution takes over. What you sow is what you harvest. of course it happens across generation. The holy grail of internet steps in.
With the advent of internet, the need for books are no more relevant and eventually the relevance of a teacher. a teacher without expertise in this context. This leads to lack of trust in institutionalization of education.
Going by the trend and applying yin and yang philosophy, we may predict that the days of guru are in the offing.
The likes of Sal Khan (khan academy), vsauce, veritasium, engineering made simple, brian douglas and many more. In such an institutionalized world, individuals are taking center stage. unbelievable.
Add to this sugata mitra's grandma pedagogy. just keep saying "i never knew how to do that". Just motivation.
The only difference is that the gurus of early days where local celebrities but now the gurus are global celebrities.
A teacher of today has to aspire to be a global guru.
And what happens to educational institutions. let us compare an industry and educational institution. Apart from buildings, people with different skills sets, machines etc, there seems to be only one differentiation.
It is just a matter of survival. Industry has a product and strives to keep the secrets. Educational institution has the objective of sharing knowledge and tries to keep it open.
May be a balanced approach would be for educational institutions to create prototypes or proof of concepts and industry may focus on commercialization. May be that is the bridge. The bridge that helps students to cross over to employment in the respective industry. Better still cross over to the adventurous land of entrepreneurship.
So, a modern day teacher should be capable enough to interact with the industry, build a bridge and get the students to know that there are bridges across, leading to the land of opportunities. Hence the name teacherpreneur.
To the preneur list of entrepreneur, technopreneur and edupreneur, we have managed to add studentpreneur and now teacherpreneur.
Evolution takes over again......
The fact that individual Gurus are evolving is stark. New perspectives! Super sir
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