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Dr Jawahar Surisetti, Advisor to Government of India joins Curious Times to celebrate Teachers Day and shares his views on Teachers: Leading in Crisis, Reimagining Future! He is an eminent Leader, speaker and educationist and has been inspiring students and future generation of teachers.

Curious Times, the leading school newspaper and children’s website is pleased to bring perspectives of Senior Educationists and teachers to our readers. Over the past years a lot has changed in the education sector, teaching methods, curricula, use of technology, introduction of NEP, emphasis on mental wellbeing of children and how schools shape careers of next the generation. We believe that the energy and enthusiasm of the leaders to adapt to these changes will help not just leading through the crisis of learning gaps but also reimagining the future of education.

Here is our conversation with Dr Jawahar Surisetti, Advisor to Government of India:

Curious Times: Technology has brought about a shift in the teaching and learning ecosystem. As you reimagine future, what, in your opinion, would be the role of technology and what would be the role of teachers?

Dr Jawahar Surisetti: It will be supportive as well as remedial. It will supplement and make the teaching of teachers more interesting and effective. Also, in far flung areas where there is a shortage of teachers it will make good the shortfall. Technology will ease out some of the clerical jobs assigned to teachers and also give more time for teaching. Also, covid has given a taste of hybridization of education. Assessment would become easier and more unbiased.
Teachers will continue to play a stellar role, but they will need to keep themselves updated and open to the use of modern technology to be able to keep abreast with the students’ comfort with technology.

Curious Times: NEP puts a lot of emphasis on skilling and co-curricular activities. How will this have a positive impact on learning outcomes in the future?

Dr Jawahar Surisetti: The buzzword with NEP 2020 is holistic education and this will include emphasis on skilling for employment and equipping with life skills for future. Cocurricular activities which used to be sidelined earlier or not given equal importance have now been given equal importance as the rest of the mainstream subjects. Students who would yearn to be in sports, music, dance, art etc. were forced to choose subjects which were not of interest to them which will not be the case now. They are free to choose any of these as their main subject.
The second main takeaway is the transdisciplinary scheme to make subjects more interesting could use art integration or music integration or sports integration, will make the dull and drab subjects more interesting and improve learning outcomes.

Curious Times: What role can schools play in making students reach their potential careers?

Dr Jawahar Surisetti: Schools can start exploring skills of students from 6th grade onwards which may run parallel to the school curriculum resulting in parallel certification too. This will help in their career development. The opening up of subject choices makes it easier to fit subjects to careers instead of fitting careers to the forced choice of subjects. The system is now more prone to wider career choices than earlier.

Curious Times: The pressures in the 21st century are different from earlier times. What will be the role of schools and teachers in mental wellbeing of students going forward?

Dr Jawahar Surisetti: The challenges in 21st century are increased competition, too many choices causing confusion, too much use of technology, too much exposure to information and lack of parental attention.
All these therefore come under the increased intervention of schools. Post covid mental well-being is also a major thrust area both for students and teachers. It is the duty of schools to avoid overuse of technology in schools, increase the intervention of trained counselors to navigate the students not just through the career maze but also the teenage turbulence and the ensuing stresses.

Curious Times: As you reimagine the future, how can schools become inclusive and accommodate students from all ethnicities or with different abilities?

Dr Jawahar Surisetti: For the future schools and classrooms to be more inclusive, it’s not enough to have facilities in school and trained teachers, it will have to have the collective understanding of inclusivity in the parents of children. This will require sensitisation by the school, and this will include sensitisation of the society at large top. Technology will make it easy to translate, differentially assess, and ensure differential rates of learning in classrooms.

Curious Times: Schools prepare children for higher education. Should competitive exams have a different curriculum than schools?
Coaching classes and ed-tech companies have been supplementing the school education. What do you think should be their role?

Dr Jawahar Surisetti: School education forms the basis of all knowledge of children. All other skill testing can either be of this knowledge or any skills deemed necessary for the competitive exams. The future lies in a single aptitude test which will then allow the institutions to choose based on the results of this test. This will be a test of learnability for that particular career. For example, engineering admissions does not have a test of physics, chemistry and maths but an aptitude to understand and do technological functions.

For the understanding of the future shape of education, we will need to unlearn the archaic system of learning and focus more on understanding, experiencing and utilising the acquired knowledge in classrooms. This new system will not have extreme pressure of the quantity of the syllabus, but more focus will be on understanding and comprehension by the student. This needs a quantum shift and adaptation by the teachers.

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