Class room management

The western theories have been talking about the 'facilitator.'

Where is the facilitator in Indian class rooms?

The other day I addressed a B.Ed class of 98 students for one and half hours.  I am sure these students would have been 'exposed' to all westernized theories of class room management. I expected open discussions, interactions, questions and other such democratic social happenings.

Such things do not naturally 'happen' in our Indian class rooms. This has always been my hypothesis. Again it turned out to be true.

Our students and teachers are from a hierarchical society. They cannot practice 'open discussion' as casually as we see in western countries.

Even when a few students 'do' speak in a class, the rest of the class watch it with a kind of 'distaste' that can either be a smirk or inferiority. All said an done we 'respect' the silence more than noise in class rooms.

Long back a teacher wrote a few lines about me. These lines are significant as they sum up the Indian teacher-student relationship.

The teacher wrote: '...[I] was a serious student listening to classes with a grave understanding showing great depth of mind..'

That explains the Indian class room.

Now our task is to build theories to describe this reality of our educational practices. 'Listening, memorizing, repeating and repeating' have been the pillars of Indian educational system for millenniums.

Tackling the hierarchical attitudes in our mind and customizing them in the class room is a very big challenge we face today.