“Teachers in schools caught in a loop” [Archives:2000/02/Focus]

By: Hassan Mohammed Saleh Ja’ashan
Demonstrator in Al-Mahweet College

Teaching is a noble profession. It is the profession of the prophet Mohammed (peace and prayers be upon him). So the teachers must be in the rank of prophets in their behavior and morals.
Societies in general always complain from time to time of immorality, corruption in thought, and absence of ideology and beliefs, largely due to shortcoming in preparing those who are responsible for educating the younger generations. The excellence of civilization or lack of it is an outcome of the degree of professionalism or its absence in the teachers and the way they are prepared into budding professionals. What I want to say is that a nation may have degenerated economically and politically, but if it preserves the respect for learning it does not need to be apprehensive of the generation’s future. In the fitness of things a nation should prioritize the preparation of a cadre of committed teachers who can discharge the onerous responsibility of grooming generations of learners. On the other hand, if the attention is not drawn to the matter of teacher preparation, it will lead to serious problems sooner or later.
There is a dangerous reduction in the rate of learning in our society. A large number of university students do not have enough knowledge about their fields of specialization. The syllabus that they study is confined to slender hand-outs that contain some pages only. These handouts are not an effective tool or aid to help learners to be competent and successful in their field.
After university studies (graduation), the graduated students are susceptible to lock their minds with the limited information they have gathered during their studentship at the university. What they are capable of giving to pupils in schools is anybody’s guess. Nothing more than the half-backed learning what they have learnt from those handouts at the university. What aggravates the situation is that at a time when every minute the world witness new inventions, new theories in all fields, the teachers are hardly able to keep pace with the advancement in knowledge due to a perceived lack of availability of right opportunities. So the teachers are constrained to remain backward. As a result of this, some of them are prone to be infected by an inferiority complex. The feeling of inferiority prevents them (teachers) to feel a sense of pride in their profession. This makes them unable to maximize their potential, creating a sense of vacuum in the mind of the next generations. This vicious circle is what we are apprehensive of.
Some teachers have been working in schools for more than ten years. They always repeat the same information and revolve it in a closed circle. They have become bored of monotonous repetition time and again of the old information. The teachers themselves disapprove of this state, but the remedy is beyond their control. The circumstances around them rather than compel them to be in that position.
Efforts should be made to solve these problems of far reaching consequences. We must be serious about the remedy for the shortcomings or the lack of the correct frames of the teaching process which, like a monster, is haunting generations of learners. I have some suggestions for overcoming these obstacles. They are as follows:
1- The faculties of the university must be furnished with well-equipped libraries to cover the needs of the departments.
2- Using handouts should be seen as a guide for students to back the resources of libraries for conducting academic research.
3- Students should keep contact with their faculties to be equipped with new information in their fields.
4- The Ministry of Education should sponsor seminars, courses and meetings for all teachers to support them with good methods of teaching and new knowledge in their respective fields.

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