Every stakeholder knows education is important in building a prosperous future for a country and transforming people’s lives, families, communities, societies and eventually the nation as a whole. While the importance of it cannot be overstated, it is time to ask, are we at this moment of crisis forgetting a moral debt owed to the bedrock of education: the teachers?
Teachers form the central agency when it comes to pedagogy — in building strategies of learning and teaching, devising a curriculum required by the modern world, and the application of those in the classical classroom setting.
If one should think teaching is easy, he or she should definitely give it a try once in their lifetime. The various studies conducted over the past years complement the fact that teachers face extreme level of occupational stress. The reasons for this are many: management styles of institutions, training, salaries, work hours and so on. For instance, one study conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) last year reports that 20% of teachers face high levels of stress, compared to 13% of other professionals. We can only imagine the stress levels of teachers at the current moment of crisis.
As we have accepted the fact that most of the teaching will be done virtually, thousands of schools across India too, like the rest of the world, have tried to usher in digital teaching. One, it is fantastic to think how a global crisis like this has pushed many sectors into the digital spheres without any planned incentives. Two, at the same time, it should also raise a question about the process itself. Consider an example of a novice IT professional. The firm spends a good amount of money and time to train the person for months with minimal or no pressure on their new recruit.
Is this the case for millions of teachers right now across our nation who have just entered the digital world? We can, of course, dismiss the notion that teachers do not need IT skills of a corporate world to perform their everyday virtual teaching, but we should not forget that they did not sign up for this, this transformation comes with enormous challenges of self-learning for them and are forced to cope with the changing demands of the education sector. Is there a better solution to this? Maybe not at the moment, but the fact that we assumed it as a natural next step without providing them enough resources, time, or freedom to make decisions is something we must ponder on.
The plight of teachers do not end at the challenges they face due to the digital transformation. Another challenge that teachers are facing at this time is monetary. For one, many of us who would be angry if we do not get our pay cheque. Numerous managements are either downsizing their teacher-force or withholding full salaries. The unrecoverable tuition fee from parents becomes their callous justification. It is disquieting to digest the fact that schools that have been in existence for three to five decades are not able to pay their teachers in full.
To conclude, it is ethically and morally wrong to deny wages or an opportunity of occupation to those who play such a vital role in building our nation. A more feasible solution to this would be to reduce the tuition fee that schools demand for the next half year considering reduced operational and maintenance costs. This will lessen the burden of genuinely affected families who are struggling to meet their children’s school fee. And when it comes to the wages of teachers, the managements should explore options by postponing expansion plans, renovation of school assets and other non-priority items. It is our moral debt as a society that we owe to these people for shaping the success of tomorrow’s nation.
