What do you think should be the criterion for hiring educators – merit or nationality – to ensure a promising future for students?
Employing an educator based on just nationality is a form of racism. We need teachers who can educate our children regardless of their nationality. Teachers should know how to embrace diversity of their students in and out of the classroom. Thus, merits together with qualifications should be the criteria.
Gracious Tingson
While, merit ought be a major qualifying factor for hiring educators, institutions need to factor in considerations like availability of resources regionally. This doesn’t just make sense in terms of providing an equal employment access to the indigenous talent, but also makes more sense logistically. Since, bringing in foreign talent will be rife with several other administrative hassles and costs which may not even directly benefit the new recruits it would be pragmatic to explore local talent for whom mobilisation and engagement wouldn’t bring in additional administrative costs and challenges.
Bahrain has a very mature talent base and plenty of young Bahrainis and second or third generation expats are ready and available to offer their expertise. If anything it’d be advisable to institute ‘on-the-job’ training and licensing programmes for the new recruits. That wouldn’t just ensure the quality of instruction based on the concurrent pedagogical principles (like common core curriculum), they’d also be more invested in the future of the children having stakes within the country they’re living in. Bringing in fresh talent from outside the country would make sense only if the expertise is not available locally. The standard practice even in Western countries is to explore options within the region before hiring someone from outside.
Morbid Serenade
Brains and teaching ability!
Michelle D’Silva
To me merit is one of the most important criteria but it needs to be combined with a good personality, a deep knowledge of the country’s culture and history too. The combination of all three is a winning card, two of the three won’t do and merit alone doesn’t make a good teacher! The nationality of the teacher wouldn’t be important to me; the knowledge, the personality and the love for children are what it takes to be a good teacher.
Bridget S Strydom
Teachers do more than impart facts and figures, they inspire and encourage students and also instill a true desire to learn and grow consistently in life. In the present age, good teachers don’t focus on only sharing content, which can be done effectively by Google, they focus on inspiring students to build a collaborative, compassionate, stable and healthy society. They infuse trust in their ability to learn and survive, and thrive in any part of the world. These qualities are not exclusive to any particular nationality. Reservations for a specific nationality in the field of education would dilute the probability of building competitive adults in future. It will act as a barrier between ethnicities and will be a regressive move. Only the deserving candidates should be employed as the nation builder-teachers irrespective of their nationality to ensure a prosperous future.
Shruti Singh
From ancient times the position of a teacher, educator, guru or knowledge provider has been considered to be the most valuable and respectful job. Right from a person’s birth he is under the constant guidance of his mother (first teacher). In school we meet teachers who guide us with an abundance of knowledge/ wisdom/ education/ skills and set the tone for higher education. A teacher has to be: Kind, caring, knowledgeable, confident, and unbiased. The teacher should be a mix of friend/ parent/ expert learner/ patient listener.
It’s highly important that the criteria of selection should be purely skill and merit based.
Saraf Deepali
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