Goblinboy wrote:I guess the teaching talent pool is severely restricted if membership of the SOP/SES is a pre-requisite.
This becomes an issue in that most research on pedagogy indicates the quality of teachers is the critical single critical determinant of the quality of the education. The curriculum, ideology, resources, etc are of very secondary value.
Selecting talent from a tiny, insular group who may be well intentioned but are hardly models teaching excellence, isn't a recipe for success.
I agree with you completely about the quality of the teachers being vital and certainly agree that the school was often scraping the bottom of the barrel. But even properly trained teachers seemed to become poor teachers under the influence of the shankaracharya. After all he had no educational qualifications or experience at all but the teachers at the school studied his words as if they were rich with wisdom.
A former friend from the school who was a properly trained primary teacher would not even consider working at Erasmus because he described the methods there as "amateurish".