There are very schools, and their number has not grown so far or may be their count is getting thinner and thinner day by day, who believe in giving something to the society or to the cause of education. Majority educational institutions are run for profit and they gain capital by enhancing their deposits and enlarging their perspective in the terms of rooms, buildings, areas etc. Very few schools can be put in the category. I am going to speak about.
Good things as they must be provided wings and set to float to reach far and wide; therefore, I take it upon myself to discuss one such school which fulfils the parameters I have fixed and the school which can be adopted as a role model for others. Unfortunately it lies not in any big city of Punjab or India.
Faridkot was part of princely state before partition and in the post independence era, it remained a sleepy town with very thin population which draws its strength both economic and social from agriculture and trade. There was a Barjindera Government College with classes in Humanities, Science and Agriculture beside a separate college for B.Ed and M.Ed Classes. A feather was added to its cap with the setting up of Dasmesh Public School on the piece of land that lay on NH15.
A school is normally recognized by its buildings and playground, but this school is recognized by its educational standard. In the last forty years the school has made a tremendous progress under the able guidance of S. Gurcharan Singh who till date is discharging his duties as a Principal of the school. Over the decades, he has painstakingly setup a model of education which not only helps the students in shaping their destiny but also open their mind through proper thinking skills in which they are trained in the school.
The school has adopted a peculiar pedagogical practice, which inculcate all the necessary thinking skills. The method is known as Socratic Method or in other words inductive method, wherein a teacher is supposed to awaken the dormant resources of learning within the cognitive periphery of a learner, through a volley of questions. He is supposed to ask all sorts of questions to give an opportunity to every student to apply his knowledge both active and passive and develop a kind of cognition of every thing on his own. Students thus get a fair chance to use and rehearse their oral and aural skills and develop a confidence to face the world.
When I joined the school as teacher in English department, I was asked not to lecture the students and I learnt gradually how to develop the lesson through a diverse range of questions. The answers of the students were used to raise more questions, thus a kind of debate within the four walls of the class used to happen in every period. This was really an excellent method. The main problem that I faced in the school was in poetry where the 18th century concepts and comparisons could not de delivered without the aid of explanation. Those were the days, I tried to develop an antagonism to the system, but in my later years of life, I found it was the only method, though I do not reject the other pedagogical practices nor I want to belittle their importance, which could be usefully employed to solve the problems of students.
Indeed more than dispensing knowledge to students, schools should pay attention to helping the students develop effective communication skills in the language besides thinking skills. They are more useful than anything else the students learn at school. It is like giving them tools and skills how to use them. It is time the schools should rise to the occasion to ape the Dasmesh Public School Faridkot or develop their own methodology.
I would acknowledge the schools. They may send their experiments and practices to me on my e-mail – gurdip1@live.com
ਸੰਵਾਦ ਸੰਵਾਦ ਲਈ... ਜੀਉਂਦੇ ਰਹਿਣ ਲਈ
