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Old Monday, January 16, 2023
hammadtahir hammadtahir is offline
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Post 1989 Comprehension

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given at the end:
“Teaching more even than most other professions, has been transformed during the last hundred years from a small, highly skilled profession concerned with a minority of the population, to a large and important branch of the public service. The profession has a great and honourable tradition, extending from the dawn of history until recent times, but any teacher in the modem world who allows himself to be inspired by’ the ideals of his predecessors is likely to be made sharply aware that it is not his function to teach what he thinks, but to instill such beliefs and prejudices as are thought useful by his employers. In former days a teacher was expected to be a man of exceptional knowledge or wisdom, to whose words men would do well to attend. In antiquity, teachers were not an organized profession, and no control was exercised over what they taught. It is true that they were often punished afterwards for their subversive doctrines. Socrates was put to death and Plato is said to have been thrown into prison, but such incidents did not interfere with the spread of their doctrines. Any man who has the genuine impulse of the teacher will be more anxious to survive in his books than in the flesh. A feeling of intellectual independence is essential to the proper fulfillment of the teacher’s functions, since it is his business to instill what he can of knowledge and reasonableness into the process of forming public opinion. In our more highly organized world we face a new problem. Something called education is given to everybody, usually by the State the teacher has thus become, in the vast majority of cases, a civil servant obliged to carry out the behests of men who have not his learning, who have no experience of dealing with the young, and whose only attitude towards education is that of the propagandist.”

1. What change has occurred in the profession of teaching during the last hundred years?
Teaching profession has been transformed during the last hundred years from a small, highly skilled profession concerned with a minority of the population, to a large and important branch of the public service.

2. What do you consider to be the basic functions of a teacher?
The basic functions of a teacher are to instill beliefs and prejudices that are thought useful by the teacher's employers, to be a man of exceptional knowledge or wisdom, and to instill knowledge and reasonableness into the process of forming public opinion.

3. What handicaps does a modern teacher face as compared to the teachers in the olden days?
In the past, a teacher was thought to be a man of extraordinary insight or understanding, whose advice men would do well to heed. Teachers did not have a regulated profession in antiquity, and there was no oversight of the subjects they taught. Contrarily, in modern days, the teaching profession is being regulated by the state as it has become a sector of the public service. The teacher has become a civil servant who has to work with people who lack his knowledge, lack any experience working with children, and only have a propagandist’s perspective on education.
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