GUWAHATI, May 5 � Our society should bring back its previous stress on the quality of teaching. The stress on individual publications of a teacher rather than his quality of teaching, is eating into the quality of our education.
This was the observation made by noted educationist and former Vice-Chancellor of Arunachal Pradesh University Prof AC Bhagabati. He was inaugurating the two-day seminar on crisis in our education system organized jointly by the Gauhati University (GU) Departments of Economics and English at the Faculty Hall of the university here today.
Reminding of the early days of higher education in the country, Prof Bhagabati said that after the establishment of the three universities at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay in 1857, teaching was the job assigned to the colleges and the universities were examining bodies.
Subsequently, he said, universities became the teaching centres with teachers and students meeting as �thinkers and seekers,� as was coined by Poet Laureate of Great Britain John Masefield in 1946, said Prof Bhagabati.
This is what a university should be � the seat of learning where teachers and students should join in a voyage of exploration for creating knowledge and wisdom.
The Indian universities had been doing this till the other day. Research was an addition to the university system. But this has now become dominant and teaching has been sidelined. This is because of the stress on individual publications of a teacher for his career, said Prof Bhagabati.
Presiding over the inaugural function, Prof Kandarpa Kumar Barman, Head of the GU Department of Economics, said that the education system of the country has failed to cater to the need of the people. Investment in the country�s higher education is only Rs 8,000 crore and this is an insignificant amount when the need to spread higher education is taken into consideration.
Moreover, a very few number of universities in the country are accredited and about 50 per cent of students fail in the core subjects. There is a need to generate the quality of education within the system itself, said Prof Barman.
The function was also addressed by convenors of the seminar Prof Archana Sarma and Prof Nandana Dutta.
The seminar is to deal with the issues concerning proper funding, national curriculum with region specific components, right policies and efficient external and internal quality assurance mechanism taking into view the challenges faced by country�s education system today.
The inaugural function was followed by two panel discussions on education policies and funding of education. The third and fourth panel discussions of the seminar on quality assurance and students friendly education will be held tomorrow.
Individual publications of a teacher given undue importance
