A nation’s future is shaped in classrooms long before it is decided in boardrooms or Parliament. Almost every literate person can name a teacher who changed the way they thought, learned or saw themselves. Good teachers do more than transmit knowledge; they ignite curiosity, build confidence and shape the values through which societies reproduce themselves. That makes teacher education far more than a training exercise. If we want better citizens, stronger institutions and a more capable India, we must first produce better teachers. In this sequence, the quality of our grooming is directly proportional to the quality of teachers we get. Their good standard is instrumentally inspiring and intrinsically influential. Ensuring quality in teacher education is imperatively prudent for any model of catalysing development. However, quality teachers enter into our life sporadically, as all teachers, on mild note, are not alike. Many positive changes have occurred in the world order through good mentors. However, research studies on teachers’ quality reveal that students exposed to high-quality instruction learn more than other students. Students with better learning outcomes would not only attract and harvest opportunities optimally but also boost and boast of a sound social system. A refined teacher does not simply show us the way, he teaches us how to find our way when the road disappears. India has been fortunate to have teachers who did far more than teach. Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan elevated the teacher to a position of intellectual and moral leadership; Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam carried the teacher’s influence from the classroom to the imagination of a nation; and Dr Verghese Kurien showed how knowledge, when combined with institution-building, could transform the lives of millions. In management education, Padmashri Dr Pritam Singh was among the pioneers who helped shape the field in modern India, and his contribution continues to be recognised across the country’s management fraternity. These lives remind us that the finest teachers do not merely transfer knowledge. They shape minds, enlarge ambition and, at their best, leave behind institutions and ideas that outlive them. That is why the quality of teacher education matters so profoundly.
International Prelude The journey of development in the United States was accompanied by the enactment of ‘No Child Left Behind (NCLB)’ in 2002, where substantial investment was made to prepare quality teachers. To alleviate the quality teacher shortage, management was executed through emergency certifications, lateral entries and other programmes. It has also been chronicled that the decline in the quality of teachers is attributed to preservice learning. In Finland, entry into teacher education is highly competitive. The teachers are very carefully recruited and it is never considered as second string to their bow. Teacher training programmes are valued and emphasised. In Singapore, the career structure of a teacher is differentiated. Experienced teachers can progress through professional roles. It starts with a beginning teacher, followed by senior teacher, lead teacher, master teacher and principal master teacher. Senior teachers provide pedagogical direction at schools and master teachers work on professional development, innovation and research. China and Japan also prioritise teachers in their scheme of things. Our National Education Policy 2020 also emphasises teacher education and the fundamental norm of ‘No Child Left Behind’. It implies that every child goes to school and that quality education does not turn out to be inaccessible irrespective of resources a child is bestowed with. Foundational literacy and numeracy are prioritised with a focus on universalisation and transformation of primary education. However, teacher education faces enormous challenges even after such enactments and aspirational visions. Indeed, the cleavage between aspiration and achievement is not measured in rhetoric, but in the bridges we build between vision and practice.
Formidable obstacles First, joining teaching as a vocation encapsulates to be least iucarative. Thus, there exist a psychological pressure that is subsumed as we have got to live, no matter how many aspirations have dropped. This cautions a teacher to concentrate more on obligations than the profession to get into skill upgradation through training courses. Side by side, the menu and venue are managed and not configured as per the requirements of the course. The trainers, not necessarily filtered on some fixed intellectual yardsticks, do not contribute much to quality components. It is hard to expect pedagogical excellence to emerge from a training architecture whose own intellectual safeguards have never been passed through a commensurate standard. Second, the course curriculum of teacher training is not necessarily in line with the requirement of teachers and educational institutions. The blind copying of the curriculum from the elsewhere with entirely different socioeconomic condition do not fit into the scheme of things. It indicates the issue of relatedness, specificity and distinctiveness. This is why ecosystem of teacher training is perceived as alien and irrelevant. Indeed, education cannot be transplanted mechanically, it must be rooted in organic whole where superorganism finds spontaneity to grow. Third, the financial allocation made on the teacher training is not efficiently used. This impinges on prolonged periodicity. It remains unsatisfactory. It is precisely because any learning is continuous and consistent process and if injudiciously poked-in, it cannot grow in a greenhouse. This is the age of AI where every content and context is fast-changing. The required financial allocation, keeping in view the number of trainee teachers onboarded, faces a mismatch. Knowledge does not grow like a low hanging fruit that can be harvested after a single season of cultivation, it is an ecosystem that requires continuous irrigation. Fourth, the support system that could have brought about desirable changes are found to be integrated with unrefreshed manpower. The ‘culture of creation’ placed on training sites remains a ‘culture of consumption’. Ultimately, academia is guided by ecosystems and augmentations. A good mind may not always be good find. It is also to be supported by hygienic coin. Finally, in many educational settings, teachers are burdened with administrative assignments. In schools, teachers are put to many other tasks other than education. University academics are assigned more jobs of examination and supervision.
some strides Teachers’ training, itself, should be treated as ‘endin-itself’ and not ‘means-toan end’ for their intellectual growth. Though Asian societies accord teachers considerably high status, their emoluments are not satisfactory. In turn, it ethically does not provide impulses of mitochondria to bring innovative returns. In fact, countries do not produce excellent teachers by accident. They make teaching desirable for talented people by paying enough to attract the serious and revere them to retain. In fact, teachers need to be selected carefully, trained seriously, trusted professionally, recognised, and rewarded selflessly. Let us honour the teacher by first honouring the education that prepares them. Let us demand quality in their preparation, dignity in their profession and seriousness in the institutions that shape them. Teachers are not merely transmitters of knowledge; they are custodians of culture, shapers of character and, often, the people who first teach us to imagine a larger life. A country that allows its teachers to drift into institutional neglect cannot expect its classrooms to become parlour of intellectual possibility. If we want to change what India becomes, we must first change how India prepares those who teach. The future of the classroom will be no better than the respect, rigour and resources we invest in our teachers.
*The author is a Sociologist.