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The Relationship between the Teacher and the Pupil.

The teacher demonstrates some virtues in his relationship with the pupil. He is patient in dealing with him. He endures the initial uncoordinated and ill-regulated habits of the newly admitted pupil.

He accommodates his occasional restlessness. The numerous questions from pupils from highly stimulated families. The appeal for recognition by some of the pupils and the desire of some to be
closer to the teacher and to share some love. He tolerates the occasional misunderstanding and quarrelling among some of the pupils, the aggregate behaviors of some pupils from different
family background. He counsels them to relate better and accommodate one another. He is not upset or angered by some odd behaviors of some of the pupils like messing themselves up. He
carefully takes care of them and later advises them. He is always willing to help the pupil feel at home while at school. After all he considers himself to have assumed the role of the parent at school.


The teacher extends his friendly relationship to the pupil by knowing his name and family background, not necessarily to exploit such knowledge for selfish interest, but to enhance the advancement of the education of the pupil. There is a sense of belonging and recognition in the class when the teacher addresses the pupil by name. Knowledge of the background of the pupil helps the teacher in the adequate use of evidences or in the diversification of evidences to ensure that the pupil understands from the background experience. Another dimension of the cordial relationship between the teacher and the pupil is the use of dialogue in teaching. The use of dialogue can act and do things. The pupil is appreciative of the teacher’s friendly gestures and practices. He opens up and recognizes the teacher as a person worth confiding in. Such mutual recognition of each other by the two persons initiate and bound of relation of which the teacher is implicitly, the active initiator, but by which the overt activity if the pupil projects the pupil’s reality and existence. Gut of significance is that each recognizes the existence, action and contributions of the other in their common experience in the process of teaching and learning. Buber describes the dialogical relations as:

First, a relation of no matter what kind is between two persons, second an event experienced by them in common, is what, at least one of them actively participates, and third, the fact that this one person, without forfeiting anything of the felt reality of his activity at the same time leaves through the common events from the standpoint of the other.

By what seems an extension, Gentile, an Italian philosopher and educationist conceived the relations between the teacher and the pupil in the process of education as spiritual. The spirit of the teacher and the pupil’s are indissolubly linked such that the previous gulf of distinction is filled and leveled. The sprit, here, refers to consciousness of the teacher and the pupil, being conscious of each other. At the same time the teacher stimulates in the pupil’s an intellectual well-being which, according to Gentile, can advance the pupil’s personality and self-creation. But despite the very affinity between the teacher and the pupil, which is librating, the teacher recognizes his indispensable role as a guard and organizer. The ideal of his being a guard should not, however, be misunderstood to suggest that the pupil is blind and like the blind beggar, should be held by the hand for the teacher to guide while the pupil follows. For the pupil to grow into a Greer personality, the influence of the teacher, according to Buber, should not be too obvious to the pupil. The teacher has some specific objective to achieve in each lesson. Those objectives nevertheless, should not be very obvious to the pupil. The pupil should be made to feel that he is responsible for initiating himself into growth. On no account does the teacher make any head-way personal interest, or that he is “helping” the Pupil or that he is interfering in the pupil’s personal interest, or that without him the pupil cannot make any head way in his dedication.

Thus the teacher does not just show the pupil the way he rather ‘guides’ the pupil to find the way himself. The teacher takes that position in appreciation of one of John Locke’s important contribution to educational thought- the ideal that the pupils should be seen and treated as a rational being from the beginning. In the process of teaching, the pupil should be stimulated to use his sense to discover and acquire knowledge, instead of stuffing him with available information. That is not all; the teacher in addition, stimulates the pupil to make his own contribution to knowledge, by perceiving any short- coming in the existing knowledge and

possibly seeing beyond the obviously given. In that way the teacher makes the pupil an active participant in the acquisition and upgrading of knowledge, and not a dormant receptacle. Perhaps it may be asked whether the friendly relationship the teacher establishes with the pupil will not affect the disciplines of the pupil at school.

CONCLUSION
In this unit you have learnt about the concept of a primary school teacher; the qualities of a primary school teacher. You have also learnt about the role expected of a primary school teacher and the relationship between the pupils.

SUMMARY

Developmental and educational psychologists have made it clear that primary school years are the formative period in the life of an individual. As a critical period most of the concept and basic principles of life are engrained in the children during these early years.