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| Ethics & Teaching Profession | | | Poonam Gupta | 1/23/2012 10:00:31 PM |
| Ethics is a science of morality. It is concerned with the evaluation of human conduct with reference to the supreme ideal of human life. Ethics teaches the whole duty of Man. It is the sole mistress of life. All our thoughts and actions belong first and foremost to the domain of Ethics. Our thoughts may be ethical or unethical, so Ethics penetrate into the deepest recesses of our personality, our actions may be good or bad, and all of them are moulded and judged by Ethics. Nothing in our life can escape Ethics, which is omnipresent and omnipotent.
Teaching is known as a highly noble profession. It requires from its members expert knowledge and specialized skills so that they are able to perform their functions in society better than the average person. They are also expected to do their duties with a service motive. They do work for earning a livelihood, for making their lives happy and comfortable, but the ideal of profession for them is public service rather than monetary gain. The extent to which members of a particulars profession come upto these requirements and expectations, will determine the dignity or standing of that profession in the society. The teaching profession is going to be as noble as the teacher has to be ethical and professional in all what he does. While performing his duties, he has to deal with students, their parents and the community at large. He has also to interact with his colleagues, the head of the institution, with the Board, or University authorities, his employers, with the government and many others. Everywhere, he has to make a choice between right and wrong, good and bad, ethical and unethical course of action.
The teaching profession has enormous opportunities where a teacher has to be face to face with serious problems of conduct and behaviour and it is in this context that Ethics play a dominant role in this profession. It need not be stressed at the outset, that of all the roles of a teacher, the teaching role is most fundamental and important. A modern teacher may be expected to work as a Guidance worker, as a counselor, as a Group leader or as a Brigade between the school and the community, but his chief function is to each. It will ever remain so, the plea that ‘All teachers should teach, to make the system work’s as made in the National Policy on Education (1986) is highly significant in this context.
Ethics of teaching is very much interrelated with Ethics of the teacher as a person. It is a positive concept by virtue of which a teacher shall treat all students with love and affection and be just and impartial to all irrespective of caste, creed, sex, status, religion, language, place of birth etc. A teacher believing in the Ethics of teaching shall always help the students in their all-round development, intrinsic values and character. Infact, he will do his best to draw out the best in every student entrusted to him. In teaching he will recognize the differences among students and seek to meet their individual needs. He will always be particular to encourage students to formulate and work for high individual goals in the development of their physical, intellectual, creative and spiritual endowments. An ethical teacher will all the time realize that the primary obligation of the teaching profession is to guide the learners in the pursuit of knowledge and skills, to prepare them in the truest ways of democracy and to help them to become happy, useful, socially responsible, and morally strong citizens of the nation and of the world at large. Such a teacher will make her teaching an exciting and a thrilling affair. The students through such a teaching, will not acquire new knowledge but also develop a desire to learn more, a love for the subject and also the a ability to learn more and more.
Ethics of teaching demand that teachers work and teach for such a positive concept whole heartedly and with utmost sincerity. Efforts in this direction do in no way imply that teacher won’t differ in their teaching effectiveness. Individual differences in the teaching competence of teacher is very much understandable and there is nothing unethical about it. Teaching would be unethical only when a teacher does not work with the required zeal and improvement, when he does not put his head and heart into his work, and when he does not try sincerely to teach at his best. It is the sincerity or insincerity towards the students community, to the teaching profession and towards one’s own self that in the ultimate analyses will make a teacher’s teaching ethical or unethical.
Ethics of teaching is based on rich, ethical inner self of the teacher. It never operates in a vacuum, however, for its proper functioning and implementation, it presupposes an ethical environment. A teacher cannot, rather should not wait for the good times to come. As averred by the National Policy on Education 1986, a teacher has to work in the available circumstances whatever they are. It is his personal and professional duty to keep trying for the highest possible standards in the Ethics of teaching. And for performing this duty, ‘The time to act is here and snow.’
Lecturer, Dogra College of Education
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