Welfare of the students is more important

I am sad to tell you that some of my teachers do not know the information that are common knowledge to students. This makes us students lose respect for our teachers. They look outmoded and show no interest in learning things that they do not know. They are real stumbling blocks in our growth.
-Manohar, Secunderabad

Dear Manohar,
I understand your problem very well. It is very difficult to have respect for a teacher who, you think, is not good enough to be a teacher.

At the same time you should check whether your teacher is competent enough to teach the subject entrusted to him. If he is competent enough we don’t have much reason to blame him. Of course, we cannot take him as an ideal teacher.

But if he is lacking in the subject he is supposed to each, it is better you make him aware of it an if he does not make amends, you could inform the school authorities so that he is replaced immediately. The welfare of the students is more important than the livelihood of an irresponsible teacher. He can switch his profession and leave the students under the care of better teachers.

Making English classes More Useful

Recently I read an article in a newspaper in which the writer, most probably an English teacher, pleads the reader to spare the English teacher. I was a student of a renowned college too. In spite of teachers’ so called methodologies I couldn’t make much out of what they were doing and, to tell you the truth, did not improve my English at all though I had a decent score in English in the mark sheet. Knowing my weakness in English my father sent me to one of his friends who is a Science teacher in a school. Within a month he made me speak and write acceptably correct English. Why can’t the college teachers learn from such good teachers and make the hours the students spend in the English classes more useful?
-Arun Kumar, Chennai

Dear Arun Kumar,
If only you appear in front of the writer of the article you mentioned, I have no doubt, you will incur his wrath. Yet I cannot but appreciate your capability to pick up English within a record time when you had the opportunity to come across a good teacher.

The problem is that an English teacher in a college would expect his students to have at least some skills of speaking and writing simple English. When he finds students without those skills he has enough reason to complain.

It is an accepted fact that many of the students who go to college straight from schools do not have enough English knowledge. So it becomes the responsibility of the college teachers to teach the preliminaries of the English language to those students.

Many college teachers who would like to take care of the students poor in English start with a lot of enthusiasm. But in course of time they lose interest and the classes become mere rituals.

Even those who specialise in the art of teaching weaker students get their models imported from some foreign expert. They are carried away by terms and labels like productive skills, receptive skills, comprehensive input theory, comprehensible output theory, drip-feed approach, immersion model, micro and macro strategies, meaning-making, meaning-conveying, problem-solving method and what not! These jargons might satisfy the scholarly egos of the teachers but they hardly benefit the student who craves to imbibe some language skills.