All the scholars are good teachers ?
All scholars are not good teachers. In fact many scholars make positively bad teachers. They find it difficult to communicate their learning to others. So the next quality of a good teacher is that he should be able to share his learning with his students. This means many things. The teacher must be a good talker. He cannot teach properly unless he can talk effectively and with ease. He must have an adequate command over the spoken word. Only then he will be able to communicate his scholarship.
Teacher should be to talk in such a manner that he is understood. He should not talk over the heads of his pupils. Most scholars do that. Sometimes they cannot help it. As teacher however must digest his learning. Then he always talks simply. He will have no difficulty in communicating to others. Students will not be able to speak about him; yes he is great scholar but he is a bad teacher because we cannot follow what he says, in other words an ideal teacher is neither confused nor difficult to understand. He is able to impart his learning to the pupils in a systematic manner in accordance with their level of mental development.
So much for scholarship and the ability to communicate that scholarship to others. But even this is not enough. An ideal teacher does not confine himself to the narrow limits of his subject. He is conscious that he has to exercise an all round influence on his pupils. He must therefore see that this influence is good. He has to be very careful about his personal habits. It is wrong to think that the teachers job ends with class work. In fact, that is only a part of the whole and not the most important part. An ideal teacher is a source of inspiration in so many ways. He teaches them to be cool and calm in every situation. He teaches them the value of culture. He helps them to become good citizen. He prepares then in short, for later life.
How does he do so ? that is an important question. Previously it was thought that the teacher should perform all these tasks directly. It means that he should deliver sermons. He should keep on telling them what to do and what to avoid. He should impress upon them the value of goodness, beauty and truth. Teachers of ancient times did it quite successfully. Most of them used to be men of religion. They would use religious books are aids to their own efforts. They were teachers as well as preachers.
By Rehana khan(111/10)
