Both of the teachers & the students ought to change in two directions (inner & outer). Since the teachers are older & more experienced, the required amount of (inner)change is less and will involve updating their knowledge & following up changes in teaching methods(leading to outcomes in students). On the other hand, the required amount of (inner) change in the students (as learners) is enormous & it has to proceed on daily basis. The student ought to feel the difference between his/her knowledge upon entering the university in ,say, the morning & leaving it in ,say, the afternoon. If no qualitative increase (whatever the size is) has happened (inner change by outer effect), then the time has most probably not been utilized well.

Both!

We have to update, adjust, and change according to change in general environment and society environment.

Then we can guide the students and try to modify them about what is right behaviour for them.

Otherwise we shall be in generation gap.

Dear Ankur, 

It depends on the issue in question. I have actively encouraged my students by means of health information to quit smoking and  tobacco chewing. Every person needs to deeply know her/himself and also know own values as well as stand up for these values. You are leading by example. 

I love this question - and I think we should to change both, since we both are supposed to be lifelong learners if we want to be successful in the 21st century. In my case, my students are adult learners, therefore I cannot use teacher-centred teaching methods, I need to get them involved in the learning process. I get so frustrated with lecturers who do not want to learn to improve their practices, but they expect from their students to learn from a person who hates learning? Of course we have to change - since learning = change, education = change. 

very good question....

in my view there should be a change at both ends...

but without compromising the axiological and ethical bases of the teaching learning process...

the most prominent reason of the degradation of education is the lust of money ... where our bureaucrats are making it as a business....

Dear all

Mutual adapting

We must update ourselves and adjust with latest environment before advising or suggesting change to young students. Values also with time change!

Dear All,

There is a third leg of the table - the management. The work of the teacher is usually evaluated through the results. Given the burden on a university professor, and thee packed curriculum; the teacher usually devices methods through which the students score high - not learn well. In such a scenario the students often think that it is the teachers responsibility to make them score high. I feel that the learning suffers the most in this process - where the teacher usually takes the course of spoon feeding as it is the easiest way to make a student score, given that he is expected to deliver to the patients as well as towards his personal growth.  

We both need to change to the best. Teachers and students  need to be highly motivated. Motivation plays a significant role. Motivation is generally what energizes, maintains values, and controls behaviour and thinking of students as well as teachers.

It is hard to give the answer to your question, up until now. However, the answer is probably both.

For that reason, let us start with the famous quotation “Pedagogy, the art of teaching, under various names, has been adopted by the academic world as a respectable and an important field. The art of learning is an academic orphan.” (Seymour Papert (1993). The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer)

Teachers need to question themselves “Why I used Objectivism in classroom teaching more often, instead of Constructivist approaches?” Or, “Why I refuse to change?”

The students have to ask themselves “I want to learn, because the knowledge gives power!” Alternatively, “Scientia potentia est!" (Latin)”

The new goal have to be to transform how children learn, what they learn and who they learn from, to reach the Summerville way of learning (teaching), because TEACHING IS ART, and the classroom is bright stage, reserved for top performers (teachers).

"At first to love, then to teach"-it's the credo of a humanistic teacher. If the educational system in the corrupt country is not perfect or double-faced, it is not a fault of a teacher.A teacher is socially unprotected, that's why it's very easy to make him/her guilty for all the social problems. To roll down the position "At first there is money and morality is then" or "All is sold and all is bought" means degradation for a humanistic teacher.Every progress has a pedagogical meaning, that's why the main aim of a teacher is to bring up a kind and intellectual personality. It's a very problem to coinside the educational problems with the social ones in the transitional period.Students are very sensitive to injustice.It causes deliquency. Is it a fault of a humanistic teacher too? Students are friends."The child should be growing in manhood, the teacher should be growing in childlikeness." Every teacher tries to turn a student to the humanistic values- Beauty, Truth, Kindness. All these values may be desecrated in the process of life, but these moral values remain eternal in the knowledge. Every human being finds his/her own conceptual model - philosophy- theoretically cultivated ideology, expressed in the complex structural experience. To N.Korzhavin, "Time. Time is given to. It is not under discussion. You must be a subject for discussion, who is situated in it." "It's a thing existence, that we ourselves are always essence- Da-sein- it's Being and Time" Heidegger. To I.Gevorgyan, "A friend can't be tested.A man of worth takes oneself off, unman like adapts oneself. And the time is missing"....

In the 3 main components of an academic institution (students, administrative staff, and academic staff), the weakest component is the academic staff. I agree with dear @ Irina Pechonkina that teachers are unprotected & they are usually the ones who are blamed for any stagnation or any decline. In other words, they are subjected to "unfair" degradation while others are allowed to escape from any responsibility.

A truly peculiar case exists with respect to higher education in the world of today: In the past, a student strived for a place at university or worked hard to get good grades and now universities and colleges “fight” for students to award them good grades in the so-called evaluations. When students go to meet a top manager, the door is widely open & their requests are met but when an old senior lecturer asks for some justice repeatedly, the door is shut & the requests are always rejected.

I have two claims to make: (i) It is not the students’ fault. (ii) The academic teachers are not completely responsible for it. The system is designed in this "weird" way. There are two possibilities – the scholars either complain about the system ruling them or they can try to change it gradually. Since complaints are not listened to in corrupt places, then trying to change the system becomes more pertinent even though it will take long time.

Dear Markovic,

I remember one of FDP instructor  telling me the same thing, however, a lot depends on what the society makes students think as being 'examples'. For example, can someone who is being paid from the money that the students pay as their fee be an example for them? Can teacher who is being paid by an undergraduate owner of an institute be an example for the students? What if the students find education a useless pursuit? What if they think that It is better being an uneducated entrepreneur who can appoint highly educated people? What if the students do not have any faith in the usefulness of education any longer? What if education remains a means to get a prefix before their names so that they may stand at a socially respectable position? Even if you are doing the best in your field, it will not make you a good ;example; because just by being teacher, you are bound to be 'employed' by someone. 

If I can be a dentist independently, why can't I be a teacher independently and work by giving my services to a group of students whom I choose as being suitable for my competence. I can take the fee and pay the institute for providing me some of the infrastructure that I need from them! Why should I change, just for becoming an example and not because I need it to excel in my field?

If you give your best insights to your students whether they pay or not they should appreciate what you are giving and would be more likely to follow in your steps. We had to pay (a lot) for our therapy supervision but it did not affect our opinion about our supervisor. In contrast , it is known that the more you pay the more likely you are to appreciate what you paid for. Our parents paid for our elementary education in Finland and I would also like to see that parents  to pay for education in Sweden to make the education rise in appreciation. 

BUT you can also see here on RG that even if you put a lot of effort into answering a question in a good way some young students even  vote you down!

Dear Ankur,

Dear All,

Every human being has a right to choose between the evil and the good. To G.Hegel, "In our life all is repeated twice, but in the kind of tragedy  it's only for the first time, and for the second time it may be in mockery -there is in the kind of parody, only parody"

We can find a lot of evil eternal examples from Classics: Chichikov and Co (Gogol), Dikoy, Kabanikha and Co (Wild and Female Wild Swine- Ostrovsky), Juda Golovlyov (Saltykov-Shchedrin), Little Zaches (Hoffman), Teacher Blood-Sucking insect (Mann), modern Trolls...

Dear Beatrice,

Dear Irina,

Your ideas always give me a new way to look forward. If I see both the answers together, I actually see a continuum of thought, rather than two different ones. I do not know if I exactly understand what both of you have meant to say, but, as I have a freedom to interpret, I have interpreted it in a way that gives me a really heartening and optimistic message. 

On one hand, appreciation of students is something really subjective, it actually doesn't matter what you do or how much their parents have to pay, some students will not appreciate even the best and the costliest of the efforts by anyone. Some of them would appreciate even the smallest ones! It is their thinking and they have a right to choose what they have to do. If they will choose the right, they might start as being geeks but if they don't they will most likely end up being a joker.

It is not necessary that we may always be right about the other person's point of view, so we may not actually know what is right for someone. However, we should choose what we think is right for us without considering whether others perceive it as right or not.

However, I still see a tint of fatalism in this concept. It convinces the mind, but maybe not the ego. But, on second thoughts, that is exactly where a teacher needs to change himself. Control the ego?

Symbiosis, as a cooperative relationship, is bound to occur between a student & a teacher especially in practical courses or projects. It is fine as long as there is mutual understanding of its limits. A distance has to be kept, otherwise the whole process will digress into flawed judgments since,e.g. the student may take the teacher for granted & may expect high grades upon putting little effort in studying. An old experienced teacher does not, usually, fall in the trap but a young starting teacher may easily slide into off track.

Could the humanistic personalities of genius -D.S.Likhachov, Mother Teresa, V.Suchomlinsky, M.Gandhi, S.Soloveychik, V.Vasilyev...- change themselves?“When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact...that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We've learned to fly the air like birds, we've learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters...”

― Martin Luther King Jr.http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23924.Martin_Luther_King_Jr_

I agree on maintenance of a 'healthy' distance between the teacher and the student. However, this distance is different for different students. It is not only the teacher, but also the student who decides how much the distance would be. Some students build an impermeable shell around them, that is really difficult for the teacher to penetrate. Likewise some teachers become unapproachable due to the aura that they create. Symbiosis is possible only within the domain of that healthy distance which on the whole is a pretty difficult task depending on the chance attitude of the teacher and the students. 

Dear Irina,

Through the names you have mentioned, I understand that 'changing oneself' essentially comes through a change of heart. It can come in two ways - Dmitry Likhachev and Gandhiji got this change or heart through suffering. Whereas Likhachev got his transformation at Slovoki in the Soviet camp, Gandhiji got it in South Africa where he was denied his reserved berth in the train solely due to the brown colour of his skin. On the other hand, others receive this transformation in childhood itself as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, whose father died when she was young.

On the whole, the transformation of heart comes through 'suffering' - and its main boon is the knowledge it gives that as Likhachev says: “At the Solovki I understood that every person is a person.” I feel that if every person in this earth is subject to such a suffering, he would become a compassionate person - whether he is a teacher, a doctor or a soldier.  

Dear Ankur,

I agree with your wise thoughts.Humanism is not weakness, it's the greatest courage of spirit.To L.King, "intelligence and character"To transform your suffering to the energy of kindness and love, or to V.Frankl, "courage to be".

Dear All,

Thanks a lot for your inputs and enlightening views on this subject. It was really helpful in clearing my thoughts of obscurities regarding the topic. This topic was more of personal rather than professional and I benefited a lot through your replies. I feel that all the teachers should contemplate on this more than they usually do.

• Sometimes, there is a lot between the lines, rather than in it. It is here that I got the essence of your wisdom - the basic answer to my question. Whereas we should change ourselves, we also have a responsibility to guide and motivate our students towards a positive change. I liken a teacher to a swift river, that tends to take even the strongest of the fishes swimming in it downstream. This swiftness of flow is teacher's persona. Persona is built through knowledge, continuing education, morality and unbiased behaviour among other things. If the teacher has a strong persona, he would definitely have a capability to take the students in his stride, like the river takes the fishes.
• A lot needs to be done in the present education system to make it ideal. I feel that the ancient system where the students lived in poverty at the teacher's home or in the university - at the same place where the teachers lived will be a far better system to create better human beings. It will also satiate the greed that has crept into teacher's mind as they would not be able to amass a lot of money either, however, they will be much more respected and will be able to work more independently.

Without change ourselves, we can't change any body.

Dear Roland,

Thanks for the link. It is a beautiful concept of six dimensions of emotional style.-

Resilience: How quickly you recover from adversity.

Outlook: How long you are able to sustain positive emotion.

Social Intuition: How adept you are at picking up social signals from the people around you.

Self-Awareness: How well you perceive bodily feelings that reflect emotions.

Sensitivity to Context: How good you are at regulating your emotional responses to take into account the context you find yourself in.

Attention: How sharp and clear your focus is.

I will definitely read this book.

Ankur, 

Sorry Ankur, this answer has to do with your question about educating the children:

I asked my dentist today what she suggests for children abroad where they do not have xylitol chewing gum. She said that except brushing with fluor, they could have  cheese or nuts something - both also stop acid attacks after the meal. 

I do not appreciate down votes in answers to my questions please. I feel it is unhealthy practice. A disagreement may be sorted out by discussion

Thanks.

Thanks Beatrice, for remembering my question and discussing it with your dentist. She is correct. Cheese is known to be anit-cariogenic.

Dear Roland,

It is true that we have to bring about changes in us - in the way we do things and the way we approach circumstances. This question has enlightened me in so many ways..

The change must include the teacher and student. for teachers, they should be a good model   Inspiration for the student, and develop their teaching skills to move up the level of the students.

for student, change the student through the correct and good implant and concepts that serve the community, and make them more productive and serve for their country.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

--- Leo Tolstoy

A teacher should also know what is it in  him that he should change to become a good teacher. For this there is a need to evaluate ourselves. Most of the teachers know that they are not able to bring about the desired results, but, they don't know the reason. They cannot diagnose the fault. There has to be some diagnostic evaluation tool to make the teacher find out..

Quote :"If you're teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are." - Noam Chomsky

Dear Ankur, 

Just ask your students, they always know how you should perform (even if they are on their smart phones while you are teaching). As a father said to the young couple who just got married: If you want advise, get children.

In Christian education, all, teachers and students should be better according with the God word. In some cases scholars can help to teachers, in other cases the teachers aid to the scholars. In others all are aided by a tutor, priest or director. All of them are called by God to their conversion in the true faith.

Dear Mariano,

Since, the question is about change; there is one change that I would never be willing to adopt - advocating a monotheistic religious education. It will not be successful in India anyway as India is a predominantly polytheistic culture, where all gods of all cultures are revered as the different forms of the same one god as perceived by different people. Even when I was in Catholic School in my childhood we used to celebrate Hindu, Sikh and Christian religious festivals together and our prayers used to praise Allah, Krishna and Jesus in the same breath. I feel the culture of monotheistic religious teaching and evangelism will sharply divide a largely peaceful and pluralistic society into extremism and degradation. I feel the culture of mutual respect followed by majority of Indians is the true hope for the world in this time of religious extremism. As a teacher, I cannot let it go.

Thank you, Ankur. The actual religious culture in India is similar to the Greece in the first century, or to the Rome in the first centuries (I to IV). They were politheistic cultures. However such multitude of gods there are not in their actual civilizations. Few religions remain actually in these countries.

I am according with you in respecting all religion and the peace between them. But the interreligious dialogue is a part of this respect and peace.

The Indian culture is different from ancient Greek culture. Since India is a large country with large population and geographical diversity, the god was followed by various groups by various names, forms and traditions. As the inter-cultural communication increased people came to know of each others' practices and religious ways. However, the intellectual class integrated all of them by giving their gods a respectable place in everyone's mind and not insisting on their own culture and god as the true god, but accepting that everyone's god is the same. There might have been initial hostilities, however; either, the intellectuals were able to understand the repercussions of promoting a single culture or due to their supreme power in the society - even above the king - they were able to effectively dominate the cultural scene and give it sanity. there was no named religion in India before the Muslims came in the 11 the Century and called the indigenous religion of all people living east of the Indus river  (sanskrit - Sindhu) as Hindus - given their inability to pronounce the initial 's'. Thus the misconceived the culture as a religion and called it Hinduism. In India religion was never the topmost concern of the society - it was god.

What you say about inter-religious dialogue is true. Religious dialogue and adaptation of change has been an ancient Indian way. Indian scriptures may be the only ones in the world that recommend their own critical study as being the meritorious form of reading.

However, in the present question, our main context is not religion, but ethics of teaching. I feel that promoting any religion in education reduces the ethical component in education. I feel religion may partially be a subset of ethics - ethics supersede religion. I do not wish to be a teacher of Hindus or Muslims or Christians or Jews or Sikhs. I want to be a teacher to my students - Indian, Nepalese, Afghanis or Iranians where ever they come from.

The Greek empire was very great. Europe, in the XVI century, was Catholic. After this time there was diverse Protestant religions in Europe with a majority of Catholics. But the Protestant religions are in declive in number of followers. And its origin had clear economic or human interests which justified their divisions among the Christian people.

It is ideal to think that all people is the same without distinction of religion, but reality contradicts such ideas, because to have a monotheist religion does not mean that the God is the same for all. Each religion has its own interpretation, and they are different because they are different religions. Moreover this occurs within a same religion.

The option for an education with confessional religion is the fruit of much reflections and coherent convictions. And an ethics without true religion creates monsters.

Dear Mariano,

I feel that finding strength in numbers itself is a political act. A huge majority of people in the world call themselves as atheist. Does that mean that there is no god? The strength of religion should be in god, not in numbers. However, religion, by its very inherent nature tends to create division among human and human. Just as you say, Europeans were divided for economic or personal interest, I feel that each organized religion is bound to dwindle down into an institution of profit for a group of people. Ancient Indian texts say that a saint or a sage should not have a home - of if he has one - he should live in extreme poverty, he should not look for pupils or followers, he should eat if he gets something to eat - either a fruit fallen from a tree on his path by itself or alms given without asking. He should not build an order. His life itself should be example for others to learn. Are those in charge of the religions in any way saintly? Therefore, are our religions in any sense leading to god or to enlightenment - or to despair? I beg to differ from you, but lately religion has created more monsters!

As teachers we try to educate our students, I think we should put aside the traditional teaching and motivate students with instructional models that allow us to fully train, and prepare them  for work through the integration of knowledge with practical training and attitudes, so if we are accustomed to traditional teaching model. Yes, we the teachers must have to change.

We have to update ourselves first, then we can try to change the students.

Dear all,

Good day,

Before change the students the teachers must be updating and adjusting themselves, with latest environmental technologies..

Regards