ON THE EVE OF TEACHERS DAY THIS YEAR, Prime Minister Modi in his customary ‘pathshala’ address said teachers should write about students who left a mark on them. In fact, this is one thing among several things teachers can write about. But it appears, most teaches don’t even give a thought to writing. Some of them may parrot in public platforms about the importance of sharing best practices, innovations, interventions, successes, ideas, but a reality check would be shocking.
This magazine purposely collected names and contacts of teachers who got national award from the central board of secondary education through RTI. Effort at getting this information on last year’s awardees, who are awarded by the President were frustrated by the ministry of HRD, which said that it doesn’t have any information on what basis (the actual work) the teachers got award. However, in July this year, we went ahead with the CBSE award winners and requested them to contribute a few thoughts on New Education Policy, Teacher Issues and even gave them freedom to choose what they want to write about helping further national education agenda. Shockingly, even among the very few among 50 odds who replied, didn’t write even a paragraph of 50 words.
Simultaneously, this publication also wrote to about 150 firms who offer one or other solution, service or product in education technology space in the country to put a summary of what they offer in layman language so that readers get a sense of what this digital disruption is about. Out of these much, four replied through their agencies.
Big corporations like Intel all along have been promoting education and engaging with education like ‘mandatory’ CSR even though their core business is chip making. The reasoning is unless there is an educated population, the consumption of their product or innovation will not be there. But, our education industry doesn’t get into bettering the system where they want to work. Almost everybody is a silo.
That by contributing and engaging with media that too niche media of own industry is eventually a beneficial proposition need to be clearly understood. Media literacy can define a vibrant media, which in turn can be a platform of objective information, great exchange and networked engagement.
