Elementary lessons

Updated on: Saturday, July 31, 2010

Fulbright- Hays arranged a summer seminar - “Indian School Education System: Trends and Challenges”, for which a group of 15 US elementary teachers, visited elementary schools in different parts of India at USEIF.

They were in Kolkata from July 23 to 27. They went to schools like Loreto Convent, Sealdah and Sri Shikhayatan School.

What they liked most in Kolkata is how the children here have a desire to learn. They are disciplined; they respect their teachers and comply with the teacher. It is amazing they said how teachers in certain schools have so little materials to teach the students. Yet under such difficult conditions, they are committed to educating every child who wants to learn. Thus a lot is accomplished with a little. “It is inspiring to see that humans can do what they want to, even under stressful and demanding conditions”, as another teacher said.

They were impressed how schools like Loreto Convent take care of “education of the mind” of the students. The school encourages and aids the under privileged children to take part in learning. Both the teachers and the students in India, they said, are dedicated, hard working and driven.

The difference in the education system in India and the US, as they said, is that, in India each teacher caters to a large number of students, almost 70 to 80. Whereas in the US, teachers teach about 25 to maximum 30 students in a class. Thus student- teacher interaction becomes difficult in large classes and individualized attention is also not present.

Another important difference pointed out by the teachers was that, the importance of private schools is more in India than in the US. In the US, a private school is very expensive, and most of them are for the elite. Also many of them are faith based.

As one of the teachers said, she was most impressed with the attitude, “we will do whatever it takes to help a child to succeed”. So teachers here overlook the insurmountable.

Elementary lessons

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