We lack commitment to teach children – Shanavas

Our Correspondent
Kohima, March 25 (EMN): A two-day state level training of district/block resources persons on foundational literacy and numeracy programme got underway in Kohima on Thursday.

Speaking on the occasion, Principal Director of School Education, Shanavas C, stated that it is not about generalising students, teachers, and schools but 'somehow somewhere we lack commitment and motivation to teach our children’.

“Children studying in government schools are from poor economic backgrounds and domestic helpers—which is a practice very prevalent in Nagaland in many districts. The domestic helpers (the children) come to government school and they do not get any support at their houses for their education because they have to do household chores once they go back to their guardian houses,” he stated.

He raised concerns as to how foundational literacy and numeracy would be achieved with those kinds of children and their backgrounds. He, however, acknowledged that none was born intelligent and everyone struggled with education, with words and with numbers.

“There are many simple methods like basic multiplication, division, addition and subtraction that teachers can teach students. However, we tend to practice the conventional way of teaching,” he added. He also pointed out that many students in the state are clueless about answering basic questions of mathematics. Stating that students have Mathematics and Science phobia, he stated that it is not an inbuilt genetic phobia among the children but “it is us who created that phobia.” He therefore stated that foundational numerical and literacy played an important role.

Understanding the importance, he stated that the New Education Policy 2020 too has given prominence to foundational literacy and numeracy. Even in the absence of NEP, the foundational numeracy and literacy is very important. He, however, added that unless teachers go to classrooms and teach children about basic subtraction, addition, multiplications, division and get feedback from them, the objective of foundational literacy and numeracy would not happen.

He called upon the participants to understand their role and educate children in order to build a good future, saying "We have to tell our children that it is okay to make mistakes." He also encouraged to correct their mistakes and ask questions.

He also asked the participants to pass on the knowledge they gained throughout the training to teachers so that they could teach children in return and achieve foundational literacy and numeracy in total.

In his keynote address, the deputy mission director of Samagra Shiksha, Kelhikha Kenye, said that NEP has clearly stated the urgency to achieve literacy and numeracy for all children in the country and set the target to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy by 2025. This was necessitated due to poor learning ability of children as reflected in several reports including Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER). ASER 2020 report indicated digital inequality and learning loss in rural India.

Reading enhancement under foundational literacy and numeracy will be implemented for Class 1 and 2 in all the 1676 government schools with student's enrolment to cover about 33,795 children. The programme would involve 3352 teachers- 2 teachers from each school who are teaching class 1 and 2, he informed.

After the completion of the state-level training for the district/ block resource persons, the teachers would be trained based on the training modules developed by the SCERT subject experts based on present class 1 and 2 in Mathematics and Language textbooks. The Teaching Learning Materials (TLMS) would be provided to the schools as per the requirement of the training module, Kenye added.

The two-day state level training consisted of eight intensive sessions with more than 120 participants from entire districts. The district/ block resource persons would replicate the same training in the district/block level. The training is being organised by the Nagaland Education Mission Society Samagra Shiksha.