CHENNAI: Noting that teachers in schools in urban areas prefer photocopied worksheets to traditional blackboard, the Tamil Nadu State Council for Educational Research and Training has instructed all elementary and middle schools to stick to blackboard and make children write down assignments rather than filling up the photocopies so as to improve their analytical skills.
Worksheets were supposed to be a tweak to the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) for students from classes I to IX to reduce the stress by having more objective-type (analytical) questions. Prior to this, the CCE had too many descriptive questions which, activists opined, defeated the purpose.
In this new approach, teachers were instructed to use the blackboards more. They were instructed to divide the board into two portions – note down the important points from lessons on one side and questions from the topic based on the CCE worksheet on the other. During the second half of the class, teachers were expected to make the students answer the questions on their classwork notebooks. By this, there was no pressure on the students to memorise concepts.
“To minimise the ‘unhealthy’ mark-driven competition, teachers were also told to help them correct the mistakes after the evaluation process is completed at the end of the same day,” SCERT sources told Express.
However, a few followed the instructions. Blackboards were not used, and CCE worksheets were merely duplicated. Tests were carried out in the conventional pattern, turning the entire effort pointless, sources added. To address this, the SCERT sent a circular on Monday to all Chief Educational Officers in districts and school heads to instruct their teaching staff to write down the CCE worksheets on the blackboard and complete evaluation by afternoon. Two-dimensional blackboards help the children observe their teachers carefully and learn. “Some, particularly the young ones, closely follow the teacher’s hand movements when they write or draw on board, and repeat it in their notebooks,” said educationist Prince Gajendra Babu.
However, teachers differ on this. “Given the short span of time allotted to each subject and e-learning catching up, blackboards will be obsolete over time,” said S Sharon, who teaches middle school students in a private school in Coimbatore.