De-motivated towards studies

[Sureshlasi]

In big classrooms, single teacher cannot judge the performance and aptitude of every student resulting in poor performance by those who are not given any attention by the teacher

By Munir Moosa

Education is the key to success for any country and success is achieved through a force of talented human beings who come via a proper education system. Unfortunately, Pakistan could not make any progress or very limited progress towards improving its education system even after the lapse of more than 50 years since its inception. This has resulted in very poor performance of the students at all levels.

In order to improve the school results, the educators and education counselors are trying to find the root cause of this poor academic performance of students. Educational Psychologists have also developed many tests to judge and improve the skills of students, but the real cause has not been founded so far.

In our country, the main contributing factors that lead to low learning proficiency of students according to my experience as a teacher are as follows:

1. Incomprehension of the Studying Purpose

The main reason why so many students don't feel interested in what they are doing at school, is the incomprehension of their studying routine. A vast majority of private and government teachers are not even bothered to explain to their students what the learning outcomes are, why they need to achieve them and how they will be assessed. Students are not encouraged to write their own answers. It simply hampers their writing, analytical and thinking skills. Students prepare projects, submit reports etc just to get extra marks, without knowing the purpose of their study.

2. Wrong Assessment Process

Assessment means to evaluate child's capabilities and not to judge them. Assessment in Pakistan is often wrongly intended by teachers as a punishment or a trap for the students. Grading shows students' errors, mistakes and drawbacks in the study area, rather than giving students a chance of demonstrating their achievements of specific learning goals.

3. Lack of integrated Curriculum

Our curricula are not well integrated. Mistakes in the books and wrong statements make students confused. Activities are always missing from the text books. The quality and the presentation of book is also dismal, although the books are apparently written by the professionals.

4. Teachers Fault

With classes consisting of more than 20-30 children, many students feel lack of attention by the teacher. Teachers are the leader and role model for every student. Every student wants to be unique and acquire a central place in the class. But in big classroom, a single teacher cannot judge the performance and aptitude of every student resulting in poor performance by those who are not given any attention by the teacher. Although capable of performing much better, these students feel quite neglected and they become indifferent towards studies and lose faith in the brighter future.

5. Wrong attitude of parents

Many parents are "performance oriented," and judge their children with their grades, rather than knowing whether their child has understood the subject or not. They just want their child to be on the top of the class according to the grading. It simply pressurises the student to achieve good grades through rote learning without understanding the subject.

If we could improve on these shortcomings, then we can expect a good change in our system in the coming years.


reference: jang.com.pk