Technology solves the education problem to a great extend. The reachability of training has improved much more than what it was years ago… But how do you ensure that there is ongoing process to make everyone educated in the future. In my opinion to get education for everyone in this world, students should be taught to be teachers at the same time they are being taught to be good citizens.
One of the biggest problem with many education systems when I was a kid was that it did not cultivate much the idea of teaching. I think competition and exams and the rank system were one of the biggest hindrance. Now that in many places we have the grading system it gives better hope but not enough.
There is an old proverb which I once heard in a slightly new way. ‘If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day and if you teach him how to fish you feed him for a life and if you teach him how to teach fishing you will feed the world…’ The last part of ‘teaching how to teach fishing’ was the new addition to that old saying and it had made a lot of sense to me. So Students growing to be teachers is the best solution.
But the issue here is that along with education if you do not instill in the student the need to share and teach the knowledge with others the situation is not going to change. Kids are often told to share their toys and Toffees with others because that helps in their upbringing. But they are often not told to share what they know or knowledge. Many time it is not because the parent feels that it is bad, it is often because the parent does not realize that their kid would have something worthwhile that they can teach and share with others as knowledge.
If you put a few kids with varied levels of knowledge in a room you can see that after some time a sharing and teaching activity starts that makes knowledge spread across the kids. To understand this more easily. Imagine you put five kids speaking five different languages together in a room and give a problem to solve….after sometime even if the problem is not solved you could see that the kids would have learned a bit more about another language. When it is a need it will happen
So if we were to bring up children to be passionate about both learning and teaching, chances are high that they would turn out to be better contributors to the society. Then the question is why doesn’t our curriculum have teachers training as a subject. May be the group exercises is a way to get this done…but I guess the point is that every student should want to become a teacher before they want to become a doctor, engineer, artist or any other role…
They should know that the teacher is the person who shapes the tomorrow. And teachers should know that a student who is also a teacher is the biggest contribution a teacher can give to the future world.
Categories: Articles, Articles & Opinions, Education
Vinod Narayan 
Yes, children should be taught to be good teachers. If you look at the scenario in India today, there are very few people who choose to be teachers. Inspiring a student to be a teacher indeed is the best thing a teacher can do. There is a saying ‘A Teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops.’