What Kind of Workplaces are
Private Schools?
In the annual conference of the society of Pakistan
English Language Teachers (SPELT) (13 October 2001) I heard a lecture by Abbas
Hussain, always an interesting lecturer, on several myths considered sacrosanct
by elitist (and not-so-elitist) English-medium private schools. Among these are
that there should be a lot of supervision of teachers; they should be made to
prepare lesson plans and their work should be counter-checked by principals etc.
This was music to my ears because I had talked to a number of teachers of
private English-medium schools (as well as other educational institutions)
during the course of my four years of research
on a book entitled Language,
Ideology and Power which is now under publication by the Oxford University
Press, Karachi). My wife, who is also a school teacher, had also kept
complaining about the increasing regimentation and administrative work in
schools. The talk by Abbas Hussain now confirmed the tentative conclusions I
had reached about the lives of teachers in the so-called ‘good’ schools.
The process of the disempowerment of teachers is strongest in private schools,
especially in those which call themselves ‘English-medium’ institutions, but it
is also creeping up elsewhere. It is justified in the name of accountability,
efficiency and responsibility. There are such potent magic phrases that they
are well nigh irresistible for most parents, administrators, owners and,
regrettably, the teachers themselves. Moreover, let it be conceded at the
outset that before these trends set in there were cases of teachers misusing
the lack of regimentation in their workplaces to work quite less than teachers
have to nowadays. The point, however, is that even with these occasional
deviations---or ‘casualties’ as I call them---the older, unregimented system
made schools better workplaces than their counterparts tend to be. Let us take
the myths of efficiency one by one in order to point out how they have made
schools less enjoyable to work in than before.
1.
Planners
Teachers are supposed to
plan ahead for at least a week. They write down the lessons in their planners
and show them to the principal. The principal checks them and sometimes points
out faults in spelling, grammar or contents. The myth is that if these are not
made teachers will come unprepared for the class.
The reality is that when planners were not there, good
teachers always did come prepared in the class. This was not difficult as they
taught, as indeed they do now, out of textbooks which are ready to be used.
There were some who did not, but such irresponsible people exist even now. They
write their planners but do not plan in reality. I was told about such
‘casualties’ in a number of schools I visited but, of course, names cannot be
revealed here.
Thus, what the planner has done is to make the teacher
more subservient to the principal than ever before. It has given the principal
the power to act as superior in knowledge, intelligence and method of instruction
thus degrading the teacher to a mere hireling of inferior status. This degrades
teachers, lowers their self-esteem and makes them feel powerless. Thus, the
unintended fallout of this apparently laudable change in the name of efficiency
is far from good. In my view, therefore, it is far better to abolish the system
leaving the teachers the best judges of how they will plan what they will do in
their classrooms.
2.
Diaries
Teachers are supposed to write in the diaries maintained jointly by them and the students as to what the students are supposed to do. The student’s homework, dates of coming tests and other relevant information is written by the teachers or written by the students and checked by the teachers. The idea is to let the parents know what is required so that they would help their wards to prepare for it. In theory nobody can find fault with the system. In practice, however, the teachers regard this as yet another burden upon them. They do not complain too much about this but I do have a complaint. In my view it contributes towards making the students irresponsible. They think that if the teacher does not write something down, they have no responsibility to do so. Moreover, and this is my major criticism of this innovation, it allows far more parental interference and anxiety than was possible earlier.
3.
Checking of Copies by
Principals
As a researcher I feel that checking of notebooks does not necessarily improve standards of writing. It does, however, keep a check on students who would possibly avoid work otherwise. This argument applies to teachers too. However, if principals counter-check notebooks it degrades the teacher, shows mistrust in her (they are generally women in English-medium schools anyway) and takes away her independence and dignity. So, out of the two evils---unchecked or poorly checked notebooks and undignified and degraded teachers---the former is the lesser evil. Thus, in order to decrease the workload on principals and increase the independence and dignity of teachers they should be allowed to decide how they will check the notebooks.
After all, those of my readers who studied in English-medium schools of thirty five or forty years ago should remember how independent their own teachers were. In my school, Burn Hall in Abbottabad, there were teachers like Miss Minto who checked piles upon piles of our notebooks. But there were also people who did not. Indeed, I remember an excellent teacher, a very gifted Roman Catholic priest (we used to call them Fathers), who bothered very little about checking notebooks but inspired us to do so much creative writing in English that we corrected ourselves anyway.
4. Too Many Meetings and Administrative Work
One thing teachers complain of is the excessive time they have to spend on meetings, filling in forms, writing profiles of students, making examination papers again and again, preparing for extra-curricular activities, preparing bulletin boards, writing speeches for students and so on.
In order to find out how they functioned in the past I contacted some of my own teachers. Most have retired in Europe or died but there were some whom I could talk to. They confirmed that there were hardly any meetings except sometimes in the twenty-minute tea-break. The school had no clerks so the Fathers did the necessary clerical work but it was very less. Nobody prepared bulletin boards or wrote the speeches of students. The students organized the annual drama but mostly on their own. One Father, who was fond of dramas, did, however, supervise the students but he was not in awe of the administration---indeed, he was part of it. Moreover, there was no hurry, no panic, no desperate efforts to please the parents, no show-off---nothing! School was fun for the teachers and, here I bring my own testimony, for the students.
5. Parental Pressure
In my days a schoolboys’ parents had little role to play in influencing school policy or practice. It is now a canon of faith that they should be involved in school affairs. And, of course, it is very difficult not to agree with the argument that parents ought to know what the child is doing. Moreover, since they pay for the child’s education, they have a right to complain if they think the teacher is not doing her work properly. Such arguments are compelling and none of the teachers or teacher-trainers I met agreed with me when I said that parental pressure was more negative than positive.
Let me, however, reiterate my radical and wholly unpopular opinion that schools would be better workplaces if parents had as little role to play in them than they did thirty years ago. In reality parents bring the element of anxiety---and neurotic anxiety at that--- to the school. They see the teacher as a purveyor of saleable goods; as a paid servant like their cook or driver. With this attitude they complain of either too little homework or too much of it; not enough checking of notebooks or wrong checking; of this and that, wrongly or rightly.
Now with the parents so used to the idea of interference in school it may not be immediately possible to reverse this process. However, if parent-teacher meetings are slowly phased out this may be eventually possible. Of course, in the case of problem children, at the initiative of the teacher, meetings with parents could be arranged. This, however, should be seen as the exception rather than the rule.
6. Tests
In my schools years we had a mid-term and an end term examination. We did not, however, have any tests. Nowadays it is a heresy to suggest that tests create a result-oriented, evaluation-fixated, totally pragmatic and neurotic attitude towards the process of education. They take away leisure without which really creative teachers cannot do anything new in the classroom. I remember that I was introduced to the world of literature by a Father in Burn Hall who enthralled us with the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson. He had the time, independence and self-confidence to do it. Nowadays, the principal, the ever-threatening tests, the nosey parents would never allow fairy tales---and what a loss it would be!
Before ending let me point out another difference between the English-medium schools of today and, let us say, Burn Hall of my childhood. Nowadays, the administration is a cadre apart from the teachers and there seems to be a whole army of them including clerks. The best teachers are rewarded by making them administrators thus giving the message that administering institutions is superior to actual teaching and depriving the teaching community of its gifted members. In my childhood this did not happen. The headmaster---he did not call himself principal---taught the senior classes too. Everybody taught something or the other and some did the administrative work along with their teaching without making a song and dance about it. There was no separate non-teaching, administrative cadre at least in Burn Hall. Moreover, although the school charged a fees, it did not function as if it was a factory. Parents were not treated as powerful consumers nor did the school kowtow to the government, the industry or the military as private schools appear to do nowadays. They were good, relaxed work places for the teachers. They were enjoyable places for us, the pupils, too. I only hope our schools would take a close look at how these relaxed schools functioned so as to eliminate the neurotic anxiety, tension and useless work which school teaching entails nowadays.
Dr. Tariq Rahman