College Teachers Role in Society

Alexander the Great once said, â€Å"I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well. † Each profession occupies a specific niche in society. Doctors heal, engineers design and bankers handle our money. Teaching, however, stands out as a very necessary entity. At a preliminary stage, teachers instill the beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding faculties of communication, decision making and awareness of social responsibilities. Later in life, no matter which field we choose to pursue, we again turn to teachers for training.A strong information base and well developed capabilities of comprehension and analysis are critical for progress. These crucial responsibilities of inculcating knowledge, kindling inspiration and encouraging creative thought are all vested in the teacher. Keeping in mind the increasing trend of both parents working long hours, the teacher is also expected to build a strong moral character and provi de emotional support. Thus, the teacher has to build a rapport with the student and be simultaneously approachable and authoritative. His/her role encompasses that of an instructor, friend, role model and confidant.College teaching is a profession built on top of another profession. Individuals come to the professoriate with specific, professional knowledge and skills, including content expertise, and research techniques. These skills constitute what may be called the base profession of college faculty. But college professors are immediately called upon to perform at professional levels in four possible roles: teaching, scholarly or creative activities (including research), service to the institution and community, and administration. We live in a rapidly changing society. In fact, love for change and progress is inherent in human nature.It is this reason why man, since the dawn of human civilization, has been trying to make adjustment to physical and social world around him. In thi s age of been even more rapid and dramatic, affecting our life styles, our ways of thinking, feeling and acting. The youth, like any other section of people simply cannot remain unaffected. The sacred duty of college teachers is to educate and guide the youth of society to cope with this rapidly changing and challenging society.The College teachers who are considered to be highly intellectual section of the society have even a bigger role to play  in this regard. Objectives:- The objectives of this Research Report are as follows : (I) To highlight the importance of educating and guiding the youth in the fast changing social scenario. (II) (III) To identify the needs, problems and challenges faced by the youth in the changing society and the areas in which they need guidance of the teachers. (IV) To highlight the role of teachers in general and the college teachers in particular in educating and guiding the youth in the changing society. Why the youth need to be educated / guided.I t goes without saying that the youth is the responsible citizens of tomorrow. Again youth is also the period which is characterized by certain unique features which are usually not found in the other stages of human stability and uniformity that marked his preceding stages i. e. childhood and boyhood. Furthermore, youth or adolescence being a period of rapid growth, development and change, is most likely to be accompanied number of difficulties and problems. The needs and problems of the youth are very peculiar and hence, these need to be understood and addressed very carefully.Without proper education and counseling it will be next to impossible on the part of the youth to make proper adjustment in the changing society. In the absence of such guidance, the youths are likely to face the danger of being misled and will be unable to translate their dreams and aspirations into reality. ROLE OF A TEACHER IN BUILDING CHARACTER OF A STUDENT: it is not everything that experience can teach us we cannot learn etiquette and manners from experience because children are like clay in a potter's hand just as a potter's gives a desired shape to the clay in his hands, so do children become what their teachers make them.Therefore there is no denying in the fact that the role of a teacher in a student's life is very crucial right from the time when child joins a day care center to the stage when he/she establishes a professional career. The important connections such as trust, courage, support, self esteem when develops between a student and a teacher often supports the building blocks of their relationship. A teacher plays many roles in the life of a student firstly as a caretaker for student.like parents, teacher shower their care, love, respect on them like a gardener watering his/her plants and even instruct them for their betterment, secondly as a friend by helping them in every right step of life, thirdly as a knowledge bank as proper education is the need of today if we want our country to progress this is because every child must be given the best level of education possible. Teachers create a safer and pleasant environment and their attitude is as positive as mother's have for their children. but as we know there are all type of teachers some are better than others.There are some teachers who just came in to the class and starts teaching. They did not get involved with the students. And students rarely like them so teacher should show their concern about what the students are feeling. Because there are many students who feel shy in interacting with their teachers apart from this students can interact frankly with their teachers by clearing his/her doubts. Therefore, i believe that the way students act depends on the teacher's attitude. that’s why i will always recommend teachers to invite the students to participate in the class.Motivating Students to Attend Class: While student success is important at every educational level, it gains sig nificance during the college years because this phase often represents the last formal education many students receive before competing for work. During the college years, students develop their abilities and match them with specific needs in the labor market. For this reason, education during these years is of particular importance. However, as in other levels of their educational careers, students sometimes fail to attain adequate learning outcomes.Motivation is considered to be the necessary cornerstone on which the other steps follow and build. Although motivation is identified as a fundamental aspect of learning for college students, many teachers at the college level are not trained as extensively in teaching methods and communication as are their counterparts in elementary and secondary school. College teachers must manage several tasks simultaneously. To serve on a variety of committees and to stay on top of administrative duties may compete with the desire to improve classr oom impact.Often the emphasis for college faculty is on research rather than on presentation skills. Faculty members gained social and educational status through scholarly productivity, and even though they might have wanted to gain satisfaction from teaching. They were unprepared for the demands. Major goal of college students was to receive practical training related to specific jobs, whereas their teachers had the goal of encouraging students' broad intellectual development. When college students are not motivated in a particular class, a common outcome is a lost desire to attend class, followed by frequent absences and plummeting grades.Class attendance at colleges was positively correlated with academic achievement. College teachers could enact strict attendance policies and penalize students who failed to attend; college teachers' classroom performance can influence students to attend the class. The teacher's focus is on his students. His task is to convey a fixed body of know ledge to his students and to worry about the best way to do so. He normally follows a textbook and a â€Å"syllabus†. A very important part of his job is to assign homework and to give tests to find out how much his students are learning.He pays attention to what the students think of him and his performance. He sympathizes with his students' worry about their grades. Educating the youth: Collegiate education has undoubtedly a significant role in shaping and moulding the future of the youth, and college teachers, being highly intellectual, are entrusted with the burdensome responsibility of guiding the student youth in the proper direction. In fact, college teachers as social engineers have a multifarious role to play in this respect.The role of college teachers in educating the youth can be discussed under the following headings: I) Understanding the mindset of the youth: The first and foremost task of the teachers in general and the college teachers in particular is that th ey must be capable of reading the mindset of the college youth who are confronted with a innumerous of emotional and psychological problems at this stage. Personal growth imposed by emotional disturbances of varying severity. Furthermore, problems of the youth are unique in that many of the difficulties are related to development issues of general cultural development and population in transition.These developmental issues lead to vague symptoms of anxiety and depression, rather than to clearly define emotional disturbances one would expect in a general adult population. College teachers can play a crucial role in addressing these problems. In order to address these problems of the youth college teachers need to be very sympathetic and cordial towards them. Teachers as counselor: College teachers can effectively play the role of a counselor in educating the young generation.They can not only guide and advise the youth, but also help them  to get over their stress and anxieties whi ch are caused by the fast changing socio-political-cultural environment around them. Giving new direction to the lives of the young people is the prime responsibility of college teachers. When Neil Armstrong set his foot on the moon in 1969, it was just one step for a man but a giant leap for the mankind. Behind this leap were the long hours of day to day scientific research by the scientist, and behind all the scientists was the ordinary day-to-day classroom teaching which is a self evident truth, so it is the good day-to-day classroom teacher on who depends the spectacular leap for the mankind.The main architect of the future of humanity is no one but the honorable teachers. They not only have to teach their subject to the pupils but even more important, the human values, positive attitude, emotional and psychological resilience, the courage of conviction to call a spade a spade on the face of it, and fully equip their students to be able to face the future challenges in their liv es squarely and bravely. A student looks at the teacher as a role model, which he or she likes to emulate if that teacher is able to have a lasting positive impression on his/her students.Teachers must remember, a child sees them as the source of all Inspiration and Truth in life. Whatever teachers do shape the future and affects the life of all heir students. And what our children are going to become tomorrow directly affects the well being of the Society, Country and the World at large. Teachers are directly involved in building the next generation. Much of what students learn from their greatest teachers is not detailed on a syllabus. Teachers who help us grow as people are responsible for imparting some of life’s most important lessons.During their initial school years, students encounter, perhaps for the first time, other children of the same age and begin to form some of their first friendships. Teachers show students how to become independent and form their own relatio nships; they carefully guide them and intervene when necessary. College is as much a place of social learning as academic learning, and this is true, not only in our early years of education, but all the way through college.Though a teacher’s influence on the social sphere of class lessens as students mature, those early lessons still have an effect on how they will interact with others in the future. Teachers are founts of experience. They have already been where their students are going, undergone what they will go through and are in a position to pass along lessons, not only regarding subject matter, but lessons on life. II) Inculcating a sense of social responsibility: Youth is also the period when the society expects something from the young generation.Youth are an asset of the nation, they have great social responsibility. Being a product of the society they must be sensitized to the needs and problems facing the society or the region they live in. It is needless to sta te that a team of dynamic and energetic youth can change the very fabric of a given society. In view of this, college teachers should be capable of sensitizing the young generation to the burning problems of the society and should also prepare them to shoulder social responsibilities in right earnest.The youths should be trained in such a way that they will use their skills and talents in the services of his community, his country and the whole world. III) Making the youth politically conscious: The youth of today being the future could assume the future leadership of the country they must be trained to be conscious of their own rights and duties, and they must be made to feel respectful to the democratic process of their roles in building up the economic prosperity of their country.IV) Cultivating qualities of good citizenship: Though the concept of education for good citizenship has been an old one, it has its role in fast changing world; the necessity of educating the youth for g ood citizenship has assumed greater significance. Youth is the most opportune time to inculcate a sense of good citizenship.The youth should be taught to cultivate the qualities of a good citizen which include, among others, ability to be aware of the importance of meeting human needs and to be concerned with the extension of the essentials of life to individuals, Practice the kinds of relationships that are consistent with a democratic society, Recognizes and endeavours to help in the solution of the social problems of the time, Possesses and uses knowledge, skill and abilities to facilitate the process living, Ability to work with others in a company, Ability to understand, accept and tolerate cultural differences.Ability to be sensitive towards and to defend human rights and rights of women, etc. One of the most important legacies of college education has been to provide students with the critical capacities, the knowledge and the values to become active citizens striving to real ize a vibrant democratic society. Teachers are an important indicator of the well-being of our democratic society. They remind us of the values that must be passed on to young people in order for them to think critically; to participate in decisions that affect their lives; and to transform inequities that close down democratic social relationships.Teachers built Education system on a strong foundation of relationships, human experience, and connectedness. Effective leaders will be expected to put words to the formless longings and deeply felt needs of others. Teachers create communities out of words. Students must be active participants in shaping their future. Student engagement involves the active participation of all students in sustainable environmental practices, a strong student voice in decision making, and involvement in the school and community in meaningful ways.Environmental education stimulates student engagement by focusing on the importance of relationships between ac tion and reflection, local and global issues, and people’s desires and needs. Student engagement has a positive effect on student achievement and motivation. Students who practice leadership in their colleges will become effective citizens in their communities. The community also has a vital role to play in providing environmental education opportunities and linkages for the educational institutions.Community groups can share their expertise and engage students in experiential learning and activities related to environmental education and careers. V) Imparting value education: The period during which the youth prosecute college education is very crucial in so far as the perception of values is concerned, there is great contradiction in what parents, teachers and leaders preach and what they themselves practice.In such confusing situation everybody suffers from a dilemma unique to youth’s time, economic dependency, subordinate role in the society, adult’s attempt s to understand them in the light of their own experience, ambitions and aspirations, distorted perceptions of and aspirations of the youth create a social situation where the youth comes to occupy a marginal place and is pushed to a stage of anxiety.Moreover, the weakening of social and moral values in the younger generation is creating many serious social and ethical conflicts and there is already a desire among some thinkers to balance the knowledge and skills which science and technology bring with the values and insights associated with ethics and religion at its best. Teachers in general and college teachers in particular must be able to inculcate in the youth a clear sense of values – moral, social and spiritual.In this context, the following aspects may be the responsibility of college teachers to take care of; a) To balance knowledge with essential social skills. b) To balance science and technology with ethics and religion. c) To help form character besides training in skills. d) To cultivate true citizenship spirit. e) To work for the fulfillment of national unity. f) To attempt eliminate religious fanaticism, superstition and fatalism. g) To attempt to transcend linguistic regional barriers.VII) Motivating the youth to dream : Adolescence or youth is also the time for dreams and aspirations to achieve better of individuals as well as of societies is propelled by the power of dreams want to become, of what kind of world we would like to live in, of how to find peace and happiness . Education is goal oriented and is motivated by the values we cherish, the ideals we seek, the priorities we choose to live by. In cultural surroundings around them, as a successful guide and counselor a teacher is capable of giving new direction to the lives of the young people of society.We need a vision, a dream. The vision should be the oneness, the essential and organic solidarity of the human family. The dream, that we each in our own way make our personal con tribution towards building unity and peace among us. The college teachers are expected to lead the societies not only by motivating the preparing them to meet the challenges of the changing societies but by empowering them to image preferred futures, better worlds for their generations and for those to come. Teacher is the role model of the society.Teacher inspires and encourages us to strive for greatness, live to our fullest potential and see the best in ourselves. A teacher is someone we admire and someone we aspire to be like. We learn through them, through their commitment to excellence and through their ability to make us realize our own personal growth. We look to them for advice and guidance. (viii) To instill self confidence: Mere making the youth dream high will be of no use unless they are taught to develop the will power.In this fast changing society, newer and newer challenges are coming before them which they must be able to face and get over with their strong will pow er. They must be encouraged to proceed with self confidence towards achieving their goal. Teachers can surely play a crucial role in developing such confidence and positive atmosphere. Conclusion : To conclude it may be said that the importance of the role of the teacher in general as an agent of social change, promoting understanding and tolerance has never been more obvious than today.Teachers have crucial play in preparing the young people not only to face the future with confidence but to build it with purpose and responsibility. This role is likely to become more crucial in the days to come. The need for change from narrow nationalism to universal ism, from ethnic and cultural prejudice to tolerance, understanding and pluralism from autocracy to democracy in its various manifestations, and from a technologically divided world, teachers in general and the college teachers in particular who participate in the molding of the characters and minds of the new generation.