Nurturing Critical, Conscious and Responsible Citizens

Education/learning is a lifelong process. Learning can take place in a formal educational setting or informal life experiences. In my view an educated individual is a responsible, conscious, motivated and a curious change agent of a society. People have the capability to become such educated individual and they are polished through the process of education and socialization. The role of teaching learning cannot be overlooked in developing a desired society where the people are responsible for their own act. Vice versa by observing the individuals of a society, one can judge the classroom teaching learning process pretty well.

Teaching learning has its own unique way of bringing up such individuals who can positively contribute to the society. There are many factors involved in this process; however some very basic elements make the teaching learning process more effective than others. For example while teaching in the classroom, the teacher should know the needs of the students. To know their needs a lesson can be started with question answer or some activity to find out what students know and think about a concept. Through probing questions the teacher can help the students in connecting concepts and making associations. In doing so, the teacher can find out the wrong connections but should not give the answers straightaway. One of the goal in doing so is to confuse the students. Once they are stuck at a point, their curiosity is aroused which is the first important step of learning. It is also known as readiness to learn by many psychologists. It gives us a clue that the student is now ready to learn and wants to clarify his/her confusion. Having said that, it is also important to scaffold support with their confusion. Scaffolding is important because at times, when students are confused they get distracted and do not want to go further in that particular activity.

Arousing students’ curiosity has a long term effect and students do not rely only on the classroom teaching and textbook to know about the topic but some of them go beyond that. If they are young students, they ask their parents or elders and if they are older students they search books, internet etc. once the teaching learning process goes beyond the classroom boundaries, it means that learning is taking place in the society though experiences using different sources. It indicates that the leaner has now become responsible for his/her learning and curious to learn and apply knowledge.

Students who are curious to know and are responsible for their learning become change agents for any society. They realize the importance that whatever they learn is not just for the sake of learning but has an everlasting impact in their life as well as in other people’s life. So they become critically conscious human beings who are ready to bring a positive change in the society for themselves as well as for others.

Students come to the classroom with their own background knowledge, skills and attitude. Such knowledge, skills and attitude either come from the home, their surroundings, the previous classes and or the social places they live in. It is utmost important to streamline their previous learning and experiences with the classroom teaching learning. It can be done through whole class discussion, written work, sharing in groups or any other activity. A teacher successful in making a balance of the real life experiences and the teaching learning materials, is then able to help students apply the knowledge in real life. In such cases learning becomes part of students’ life and life experiences become part of their learning. Once people are able to apply the classroom knowledge in their real life and vice versa, they become conscious change agents.

Bringing up such critically conscious beings is not only affected by the outside forces rather the important thing is the person’s inner motivation and willingness combined with the learning opportunities provided. A very important personal effort is having a clear goal in life. It has been observed that people with clear focused goals are more successful than the ones without any goal in life. So it is very important to help children develop their own goal in life by giving them an exposure of a diverse field in the early years. Once they experience the different fields, it would be easy for them to have their own goal based on their own interest. This goal can be their career goal. A clear career goal then helps the students think about other people around them which leads to develop a life goal. People with life goal do not only think for their benefit only but are also interested in bringing a change in others lives by working for them. Hence they become change agents of a society.

Children’s inborn potential also plays a vital role in making them capable individuals of a society. It is the teachers job to unfold the children’s potential. When students learn with the help of a teacher, they are able to bridge the Zone of Proximal Development (a term coined by Vygotsky) which refers to the difference between what a child can learn with or without help or the actual development and the potential development. In order to bring out a child’s potential, individual attention in the classroom teaching is necessary. However it is a difficult job in a class of 30-40 students and a 45 minutes class time. However identifying a group of students with relatively similar characteristic and supporting them accordingly can solve the problem to a some extent.

In conclusion it is pertinent to realize the importance of critically conscious and responsible citizens. If every teacher makes the classroom teaching learning experiences meaningful and is able to give a meaning making life to every child, then we will be able to address the issues of lawlessness, extremism, disloyalty, indifference attitude and such other issues facing by our society today.