Ex-Raist Association (ERA) - the alumni group of the Motilal Nehru School of Sports (MNSS), Rai - is going to celebrate Teacher's Day with virtual event marking it by an interaction with students their teachers - past and present.
I, as an ex-teacher at MNSS-Rai, is contributing the following write-up on my website for the occasion of Teacher's Day.
As we celebrate the Teacher's Day-2019 on September 5, the birth anniversary of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, we must reflect on his qualities and thoughts who himself was an exemplary teacher and a philosopher par excellence.
He was also India's first Vice President of India and the second President of India, who was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1954.
If we go by the thoughts of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan on the teacher, he had believed that "Teachers should be the best minds in the country." He saw teachers in the role of reflective thinkers.
A reflective teacher is the one we reflects on his work and provides suggestions to himself or herself to improve his or her teaching practice. A reflective teacher, thus, acts, reflects and improves. It is said, a reflective teacher believes in self-improvement and self-renewal. A true teacher is a thinker who helps his or her students to think.
He has once said, "Books are the means by which we build bridges between cultures." This implies that the teacher must remain in touch with latest knowledge in his subject area, teaching methods and resources or he or she will soon be redundant. A teacher must be a voracious reader and read everyday to bring latest theory into action. He was of the view that a teacher must help his or her students to think.
His thoughts on teaching and teachers imply that teachers as facilitators of learning should create happiness in classroom by converting teaching into a science by making it process-based. He had written, “A life of joy and happiness is possible only on the basis of knowledge and science.”
He had wanted teachers to be humble and polite to make learning and refining knowledge as a continuous process. He had stated once, "When we think we know, we cease to learn."
Thus in the views of Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a ideal teacher is the one who is humble, reflective thinker and makes teaching process-based.
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