Topic: Education
Q. 1. What makes a good student?
Answer: A student is a good student when she/he learns new things at every opportunity not only what is taught in the classroom, but also what is taught by nature and his/her surroundings. We would call a student a “good student” also when he/she asks many pertinent questions and tries to find out their answers that ultimately lead him/her to find the “truth”. And finally, obviously, ordinary people would judge a good student by the grades she/he gets in important exams and tests.
Q. 2. What role should the teacher have in the classroom?
Answer: The primary role of a teacher should be to teach his/her students the curricular lessons of the school. But, at the same time, a teacher should also act as a “mentor” or “role model” in the classroom so that his/her students can learn many other important “lessons of life”, such as the value of discipline, punctuality, hard works, honesty and respect for others, from him or her. In fact, the role of a teacher in the classroom should also include teaching a student how to become a decent and responsible member of society. A good teacher doesn’t just teach what is written in the books but also what is not “written” on the books sometimes.
Q. 3. Do you think computers will one day replace teachers in the classroom?
Answer: I wouldn’t really like to think that computers will and should replace teachers one day in the classroom because students require “human touch” to behave and act like a “human” in the real world unless, of course, we want our children to become like “human-robot”. A computer can certainly teach students how to become “smart” in the classroom, but it won’t probably be able to tell when to behave like one. A computer won’t certainly be able to teach many other “real-world” human behaviours, emotions and moral disciplines to students in the classroom like a human teacher.
Q. 4. How has teaching changed in your country in the last few decades?
Answer: In the past few decades, teachers used to rely mostly on chalk pencils, marker pens and writing boards to teach students in the classrooms, but those teaching materials have been replaced by computers, keyboards, projectors and wall screens. In these days, teachers and students are much more connected to each other which were almost impossible even a decade ago. In fact, with the tremendous advancement in the information and mobile technology, learning through digital games and learning apps have become more and more popular these days. Finally, both students and teachers are learning more and more new things and sharing their information among each other since collecting data and information have become much easier these days than it was about a few decades ago.
Q. 5. What is the difference between the way children learn and the way adults learn?
Answer: Children and adults learn in fundamentally different ways. Adults are self-learners and decide what is important to be learned next while young students are dependent on adults (teachers) for their next lessons, assignments and subjects. The children usually tend to accept the information, presented to them, based on their face values, since they have no or very little experience upon which to draw ( any conclusion) while the adults usually try to challenge information and accept them only after validating them in the light of their beliefs and experience. Finally, children are usually motivated to learn because of rewards or punishment, but adults tend to learn because of their “interest”.
Q. 6. How can a teacher make lessons for children more interesting?
Answer: In my opinion, the best way to make the lessons interesting is to make them more and more interactive by allowing the children to ask more and more questions no matter how “weird” they sound. And, the more they are allowed to ask questions, the more “empowered” they feel in the classroom to learn.
The lessons can be interesting also if the children are allowed to make their own “choices” on what contents to learn and how to learn them. Teachers can make lessons interesting for their children by creating contents are which are more “real-life” oriented such as allowing their students to do their math based on how much money they would like to spend in buying their favourite ice creams and so on.
