To learn is to take in new knowledge. Sometimes we are told what to learn. Sometimes it is left to us and sometimes we choose to go towards something and take it in. The classroom is the seat of formal education in the world we live in, training students about all that has happened before them, so as to prepare them for the world around them, so that they can go out and change it in the future.
Significant efforts are being made in Jharkhand to strengthen the local system in order to encourage the education of children under the TRI-PRIDE project. Through this project, the endeavour is to ensure continuity and quality of children’s education through community participation.
I have worked on this topic with the teachers and students of grades 5 to 12 in different schools. In the lower classes we talked about students’ knowledge of the solar system, planets, stars, celestial bodies, constellations, phases of Moon, eclipses, with which many superstitions are associated and are present everywhere in society. Generally, astronomy is seen as another branch of science, but my experiments with teaching science through it have got positive results.
Are certain individuals born to be teachers and can only those be truly competent? Or can people without such aspirations develop to become ‘great teachers’? Are there certain conditions, the presence of which foster such development?