Upside Of Scaling Down

India must offer unique services, not just depend on low-cost production

htet 2018, htet registration, htet online registration, htet onloine application, bseh.org.in, bseh, hbse, htet exam date — In passing, student/teacher ratios are generally lower in relatively rich countries and higher in relatively poor countries.

“Those who can do, those who can’t teach.” This quote has been ascribed to many people. No, Woody Allen’s punchline in Annie Hall isn’t the first reference. If credit is to be given, we should stick to George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman. The idea/line occurs in the main text of the play, as well as in the appended Maxims for Revolutionists. In the former, “Don’t listen to her Bob. Remember those who can, do; those who can’t teach.” In the latter, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” There is no reason to presume these were Shaw’s views, as opposed to a clever witticism pronounced by a protagonist in a play. For example, on education, the Maxims also include the following. “When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.” The word “teacher” (teach) has an etymological origin such that a teacher means someone who shows a direction. This requires interaction between teacher and student, guru and shishya. Successful teaching is individual-specific and a successful teacher adapts according to capacity and receptivity of recipient. That’s the reason we harp on low student/teacher ratios, if we talk about a class. Lower the ratio, more individualised the attention. Ideally, the figure should be 1:1. But with too many students and too few teachers, we must have classes, not individuals. Thus, deviations from 1:1.

In passing, student/teacher ratios are generally lower in relatively rich countries and higher in relatively poor countries. Without getting into the specifics of regulatory norms, we have implicitly assumed the ratios will decline as we move up the education ladder. Therefore, 30:1 or 35:1 is acceptable in schools, but it must decline to 25:1 for under-graduate and 10:1 for post-graduate or professional courses. At the PhD level, it will clearly be 1:1. In other words, we recognise the 1:1 guru-shishya interaction as ideal, but deviate on grounds of scarce resources — too many students, too few teachers. The lower range of the education spectrum is like an assembly line, individuality is left for the upper range.