Books by Mehnaz Ansari

Teachers are called nation builders in every country and in every society. The role of teachers is of great importance. It is left to the teachers to inculcate personality characteristics, right values - the values of good citizenship producing law abiding and nation loving citizens. India has made considerable progress in school education since independence with reference to overall literacy, infrastructure and universal access and enrolment in schools. Two major developments in the recent years form the background to the present reform in teacher education - the political recognition of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) as a legitimate demand and the state commitment towards UEE in the form of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. The country has to address the need of supplying well qualified and professionally trained teachers in larger numbers in the coming years. At the same time, the demand for quality secondary education is steadily increasing. It is recommended that the aim should be to reach universal secondary education within a maximum of ten years. Given the problems of inadequate quality in most secondary schools due to poor infrastructure and insufficient and poorly equipped teachers, the need for addressing the professional education of secondary teachers acquires great importance. The education of teachers should be such that teachers should set an example and provide for their pupils the ideal of the citizens who is conformist, conservative and cautions. As for their moral character, righteousness, wisdom, honesty are among the adjectives which might be ascribed to them. Teachers should assist the students in their physical, intellectual, religious, social, emotional, spiritual development in the well balanced and harmonious manner and imbue them with human values, which is why teacher education today is an integral part of any educational system. In this study, personality traits of teachers will be analyzed in conjunction with their teaching effectiveness, in order to reach a better understanding of what makes a good teacher, and how to educate him to satisfy the rising demand of the Indian society.

If a child performs a work according to his natural abilities and creative potentialities,it is conducive to his healthy growth, but if it is imposed upon the child due to the needs of his family and exploitation by the employers, it becomes harmful for the development of his personality. Labour, in case of children, is harmful because they spend their energy for the purpose of survival instead of spending it to nurture their latent powers. Childhood is regarded as the precious years of the opportunity when reasonable intellectual, social and personal development takes place. The child, who is working full time to support his family, does not get any school education. Early education is universally recognised as crucial for the optimal development of the child. Due to long hours of involvement with work, working children have no time for any kind of schooling, most of the psychological and social needs of these children are very little satisfied. Are they different from the normal school-going children or can they benefit from education. Hence a need was felt to study the cognitive and social development of working children in comparison with a school-going child.