Short Essay on “Teacher as an Agent of Change and a Social Worker”.

The first and foremost responsibility of the teacher is in relation to his students. His job cannot remain confined to delivering a set of lectures or mere “coverage of syllabus.” What is called is a revolution in education -“changes in objectives, in content, in teaching methods, in programmes, in-the size and composition of the students’ body, in the selection and professional preparation of teachers and organisation. “The primary objective should be to treat each individual student as an end in himself and to give him the widest opportunity to develop his skills, abilities, and potentialities to the full.

He should go out the institution with a sense of values and purpose and fully ‘equipped to pay his role not only as a professionally trained person’, but as an enlightened and dedicated member of the society, committed to the values of democracy, secularism and socialism.

The teacher has an important role to play in the acceptance and adoption of various educational innovations, e.g. restructuring of courses, examination reforms, practical orientation to courses, making studies relevant and so on. In the past, many of the reforms reached a dead end because of the apathy of the teacher.

The teacher should also accept his responsibility in the realization of our social objective, which implies that education should be related to the life, needs and aspirations of the people.

From this point of view, it becomes important that the teacher becomes an active participant in the following activities:

(i) Programmes of community development,

(ii) Adult education and extension,

(iii) Social and national services,

(iv) Co-curricular activities,

(v) Programmes of non-formal education, and

(vi) Social and national integration.