The implementation of this responsibility of the rural school, naturally change the role of the village school teacher. Previously he remained somewhat isolated from the main currents and problems of the life of the rural community when he taught in traditional schools.
His sole task, thus, was to impart academic instruction to children. But in the new set up his task has become more creative and meaningful.
According to “Handbook for Training Institutions” by K.N. Srivastava, published in 1962 by the Ministry of Education, Govt, of India, the village school teacher has to play the following role in making his school really “community school”.
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1. Orienting Instructional Programme to the Service of the Community:
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The main task of a teacher is to teach the various subjects prescribed in the school curriculum. These subjects deal mainly with three aspects of a man’s environment—physical, social and economic.
They also include a study of the language which is the medium of communication and culture. In the new set up, the rural teacher will teach these very subjects, not in the traditional bookish manner but in harmony with the environmental requirements and in accordance with the technique of correlated teaching, evolved under the system of Basic Education.
In the process of doing so, he will discover that school instruction becomes effective and meaningful to children only when it is related to activities, contributing to the life of the community.
2. Carrying Community Experience into the Classroom:
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The experiences of children and the teacher, in the immediate community, should be fully utilized to enliven classroom instruction. One way of doing this is to focus the attention of children on their experiences at appropriate occasions and make it clear to them that what they read in books is only a symbolic representation of life around them.
3. Carrying Community Experience to the Total School Programme:
If education is life and a preparation for it, the influence of the community should so permeate the educational programme that it develops the total personality of the child. A child’s personality cannot be nurtured in isolation from community influence.
The rural school teacher should, therefore, see that the activities, planned and executed in the school are in consonance with and a part of the pattern of community life.
4. Carrying Classroom Experience to the Community:
The teacher in the rural areas can organise a number of activities through which the men and women in the village can be acquainted with community needs and the educational training of children. There should be established a constant flow of intellectual life from the rural school to the community.
5. Developing Community Appreciation for Children’s Education:
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It is one of the urgent duties of the teacher to make people appreciate education. This role of the teacher assumes a special significance in our country today when it is faced with the challenge to provide universal compulsory education.
If a proper appreciation of education is developed in the people and if education itself becomes a tool of rural reconstruction, community organisation and development will be easier to achieve. Such efforts will raise the status of the school and will secure community support.
6. Educating Adults:
Adult education is one of the major fields in which the village school teacher can play a significant part. Adult literacy and educating rural adult are of great importance to the parliamentary democracy and new social order that we have pledged ourselves to create. The village school teacher is the most appropriate person in the village to share this responsibility.
7. Educating the Parents:
The village school teacher has a rare opportunity for educating the parent. The best incentive to learn for a parent is when activities are centered round his child. To secure his interest, therefore, the teacher must proceed from the immediate interest to the remote, namely from the child and his problems to the family and community-problems. Success in this effort depends upon the manner in which he motivates the educative activity.
8. Piloting Youth:
A fully successful community development programme involves all groups of people in it, in activities which are suited to their age, ability, and aptitude. Energies of youth can be harnessed for activities which will educate them and at the same time benefit the community.
If properly utilized, the youth can well be a dynamic force to bring about healthy change in rural communities. The village school teacher is extremely suited to organise youth programme, partly because he knows the psychology of adolescent and partly because many of the young person’s come into close contact with him in passing through school.
9. Organising other useful Services:
The village school teacher can establish the permeability of his school to the community by organising useful activities to meet some of the social, economic, health and recreational needs of the village. Such activities need not necessarily be at the expense of the regular school programme. The work of the school can be so organised that it introduces progressive thinking among the rural people in matters of community interest.
Much will, however, depend on the teacher’s leadership and the rapport that he establishes with the community.