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Tony Desa
This has reference to the above captioned article on Focus by Bevinda Collaco, (GomantakTimes Weekender June 11, 20000).
As a member of the teaching fraternity, I would like to offer my deepest sympathies and condolences to the bereaved family of the unfortunate Sunita Sawal, on my own behalf and on behalf of my colleagues. Of course, no words of sympathy or monetary compensation can make up for a young vivacious life so needlessly lost. May her soul find the repose she deserves.
At the same time, I deplore Ms. Collaco's harsh criticism of Sunita's teachers. She writes, "If Sunita had received the right kind of education, the kind that the Fifth Pay Commission should have guaranteed students, she would have learnt that failure at the SSC level is no reason to kill her self. If her teachers made the slightest attempt to earn the whopping salary that the tax payer is paying them, they would have helped weak students like Sunita and would have told them that even f academics was not their long suit, they had other strengths which they could work on for their success in life. But no Sunita killed herself."
It would appear from the above emotional tirade, Ms. Collaco does not have the slightest idea of the reality around her and not the slightest inkling of what goes on in the academic world.
In the first place, students are in school for a limited number of hours in a day. Most of their time is spent at home and with their peers. So the influence of the home, the kind of guidance given by peers and elders in the family is paramount. Many parents hope for the moon without realizing that their children cannot achieve the ambitions that their parents have mapped out for them without consulting their offspring!. Many parents do not even consider the wishes, desires and inclinations and abilities of their children in the matter. With our noveau riche and emerging classes, keeping with the Joneses is IT!
Then again, every school is limited by the SYSTEM. Any given teacher will have at the most two or three periods of thirty five minutes duration in a given class in a given day. A class will generally have upwards of thirty-five students. So on an average, how much "quality time" can a teacher have with the student? Schools are more concerned with covering the syllabus, which is fully loaded. If a teacher does not "get on with it", there are complaints from parents, PTA, the head and the inspectors. If the school percentage is low at the SSC exams, there is a hue and cry - it does not matter that the schoolteachers took time to prepare the children for life and hence could not cover the syllabus or could not achieve the high percentages that every one looks at, never mind the participation in sports and co-curricular activities!
Our syllabus has no place for something vitally needed - Life skills education. We need to prepare our children for life - make them street smart and savvy! But this has a low priority with our Educational Planners
So what, change the system you would say. But the system is a monolith and obeys Newton's Law of Inertia very faithfully. Hope is however not lost. A very positive step taken by the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education is to stop the Merit List. Also on the anvil is a move to have "no detention" at the SSC examination - that is to say, no matter what grades a student may secure in each subject, the student will be declared as having passed the SSC Examination. So if you want to be a mechanic or a carpenter and languages are not your strong suit, you have no problem. Or conversely, if languages are your strong suit and you hate science and mathematics, so be it.
Instead of tarring and feathering teachers what Ms. Collaco could have done is to have taken up the issue of having trained counselors in our schools today. In this modern day and age, our children are living under tremendous pressures - they are subtly influenced by the media and peer pressures. There is no one that they can turn to especially in this age of nuclear families, particularly in distressing and difficult times.
Ms. Collaco, we may be paid
Fifth Pay Commission Salaries - but under paid at that (as our legal Fifth
Pay Commission Salaries are Part B, which are yet to be implemented). May
I remind you that even the lowliest worker in Government carries home a
Fifth Pay Commission Package and given the circumstances most teachers
earn their bread. Your rancour is therfore unjustified and regretted.
tony_desa
June 2000