With the objective to motivate and re-energise the teachers, Don Bosco Higher Secondary School (DBHSS) Dimapur organized orientation programme for its teachers Wednesday, at DBIL, DBHSS, Dimapur.
Addressing the teachers, Editor Nagaland Post, Geoffrey Yaden, stressed on the need to be transformative and relevant to evolution taking place in education. He cited the paradigm shift that had taken place in education during the decades. Yaden said certificates and degrees have become useless in a skill-driven world. He also recalled a paper presented by him during 1999 at a seminar organised by Naga Hoho.
Yaden gave an insight about this paper presentation that was also used as a guideline for the recommendation of reforms in education by a panel to the government during 2002.
He saidthe government talks about need for quality education and lamenting that 42% of its teachers were untrained. Yaden said merely making teachers earn B.Ed degree cannot guarantee quality education. He said the bane of education in Nagaland is that it has become bureaucratised.
Geoffrey said this is reflected even in backdoor appointment of teachers. Therefore, when education has become bureaucratised even teachers by and large, have less commitment despite enjoying huge salary as compared to the performing teachers in private schools.
Coming back to the present need for teachers to be transformative, Yaden said teachers have to gear up and get involved in non-class room projects with students and also get themselves skilled in different fields. He said contemporary education has shifted away from conventional classroom lectures where teachers no longer giving monologue lectures but play a supportive and catalytic role.
Later Geoffrey Yaden also visited the vocational training centre at AIDA where he interacted with around 50 trainees. Most of them were under matric and on knowing this, Yaden encouraged them not to feel any lesser but to be grateful they have an opportunity to pick up and improve skills. He said educational qualifications are not as relevant in an ever expanding skill-driven world.
Later at the second session, DBHSS principal Fr. Joshua Gangmei spoke on the types and major components of child abuse, child care principles: keep the interest of a child, be protector of a child ensure non-discrimination and the different guidelines for school personnel in the highlight to abuses. He encouraged the teachers to completely stop implementing physical abuse towards children.
Fr. Joshua further informed about the various programmes which has been scheduled to be held in the month of July and August.
Earlier, Father (Dr) AJ Sebastian former Nagaland University (NU) Head of Department (HoD) shared his experience on how he motivated students to change. He encouraged the teachers to be counsellor. Altogether, 67 teachers attended the programme.