Who is the real customer - Parents or Students ?
Feb 17, 2011
Living in India and experiencing the affordable private school (APS) for the past few months has encouraged me to take a good hard look at the current educational systems in place in these schools. In taking this assignment, my intent was to give my school owner and teacher’s an alternate perspective; sharing with them how things operate in other parts of the world so together could improve upon the current systems and ultimately the quality of education. It is a rather simple, idealistic goal that has faced a great deal of adversary.
One such challenge, APSs are traditional schools that are operated as a business. With this, one of the fundamental questions would be who then is the customer? In traditional school models, students are the customers. However, as I examine the processes and the reasoning behind it, I have to wonder if parents are not the primary customers that the schools cater to. Yes, children are learning but they are clearly lacking the critical thinking skills and confidence in their knowledge that will ultimately set them apart when entering the job market.
In theory, meeting the demands of parents who want a good education for their children would not be a difficult process or present a conflict. Yet, tension arises when parents, expect their students to gain so much more than a traditional academic education and use arbitrary indicators to ascertain whether or not a good education is being attained. Many parents of APS students are illiterate or have very limited education. They use criteria’s of whether or not their child has developed monetizable skills, self discipline, self motivation to do homework, cleanliness, the number of books and corrected works the child brings home daily, and if they can read billboards and televised information as the measure of academic achievement. The system as it stands, is functioning, students are graduating, and getting jobs. But I want more for the students, teachers, and owners whose lives are directly affected by these schools. Teachers who are all too often under-qualified, underpaid, and overworked are expected to make sense of parent expectations and truly teach the children. They face the challenge of teaching to parent expectations which, truth be told, coincides with teaching to the test, or breaking from the norm and genuinely teaching children, exciting them to think, to be curious about the world around them, and being productive citizens. At what point do we put the true needs of the students first, after all they are the future of the country?
I understand the concerns of the parents and I wholeheartedly understand the fears and concerns that this would raise for school owners. Would parents tolerate the changes? Can parents afford to change schools? If so, would there be a deficit in incoming tuition? How much money would this mean in teacher training and what guarantees that once they train these teachers that they would stay at their school? These are all very real concerns. I don’t pretend to have the answers. In thinking about this I’ve actually raised more questions than I have answered. Ideally, if parents were taught to exercise more trust in APS programming then school owners could honor this with lessons and activities that promote critical thinking. Yes, I know, easier said than done, and no, I do not have concrete ideas of what this might look like. We just can’t stop trying; education is cardinal to changing India. Yes, for government, business, etc. but on a human level, education is critical in empowering people to live truly fulfilling lives.
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