The modern age is the age of science. The quick means of communication and transport have revolutionized life. The agriculture, the industry, even the very lives of the people have felt its impact. In the field of education, too, science has revolutionized the method of teaching. Thanks to science, the once boring and tedious lessons have become enjoyable through television—the greatest miracle of the modern times.
Television brings to the class room the best teachers. The teacher makes use of a large number of teaching-aids and thus makes the lesson interesting and useful. The subject matter becomes living and meaningful. Even the dullest students take pleasure in it.
Television provides entertainment as well as education. It appeals to the eye and the ear. In a lesson on science subject the teacher teaches through practical demonstration. There is the most modern apparatus to bring home to the class the underlying principles. In a lesson in English the students hear the right pronunciation and intonation of the words and thus improve their manner of speaking.
The lesson on the television serves a two-fold purpose. It is as entertaining as a film on the screen. Secondly it can be retained in the mind for a longer period than the lesson studies in a book. It is because of this that the television lessons are becoming more and more popular. Students wait for the television lessons eagerly.
Television has come to stay in the Delhi schools. There is a special period in which lesson in subjects like English, Hindi, Physics and Chemistry are telecast twice a week. There are television rooms and the students rush to these rooms five minutes before the telecast. The subject teacher, too, watches the lesson. There is a discussion on the lesson after the T.V. period. The students place their difficulties before the teacher. He removes their difficulties and supplements the lesson. The students in this way learn a lot. They have the benefit of learning from two teachers.
One thing is however, certain. Television has indeed great potentialities for the future. If more television centres are opened up in the country, education through the television can become a possibility. But in no way can television replace the teacher. Personal contact of the teacher and the taught is very essential for the proper growth of the child and it is here that teacher will still be needed—may be only to supplement the lesson telecast. Then there are other difficulties too. All the pupils in a class are not of the same intelligence and understanding. The weak students are bound to lag behind. The active participation of the pupils in the lesson is necessary and this is only possible in a school and not on screen. Then there is the correction work. The students’ work needs thorough checking and this cannot be done in education through the television.