Raja Roy Singh Lecture

Sheldon Shaeffer, Former Director, UNESCO Bangkok

I began my professional life as a teacher and in my many lives since then, it has always been clear that good teachers and good teaching are the core of quality education. But we still cannot find ways to get the best students to become teachers, or the best teachers to stay in the profession and teach the most challenging pupils in the most challenging schools. We still cannot provide adequate continuing professional development for practicing teachers or, even more difficult, adequate pre-service training for those able (and sometimes willing) to enter the profession. And we have not yet systematically learned how to train teachers for the increasingly large range of students that will meet with special needs – needs which go far beyond disability, Based on 40 years of experience in education, beginning from that very first job as a teacher, this presentation will offer a few very practical suggestions as to what might be done to provide that better education that is so necessary in this ever-changing world.

Download the paper (pdf, 390kb) and presentation (pdf, 1.2mb)

About the Raja Roy Singh Lecture

Beginning in 1997, the first Keynote Address at each UNESCO-APEID International Conference on Education is designated as the "Raja Roy Singh Lecture". This is in recognition of, and to honour, the enormous contribution Dr. Raja Roy Singh had made to assisting UNESCO Member States in the Asia-Pacific region improve their education systems, through working in partnership with UNESCO Bangkok to promote educational innovation for development.

Dr. Raja Roy Singh
Dr. Raja Roy Singh joined UNESCO in 1964 and served initially as the Regional Director of Education and later as the Assistant Director-General of UNESCO in the Asia and the Pacific. He was based in Bangkok for 20 years until his retirement in 1985. Dr. Singh was deeply involved in international co-operation for the promotion of education in the Asia and the Pacific region. He was instrumental in developing the UNESCO Bangkok office into an effective institution that helped to address and resolve educational issues and problems in Member States. In his work, he was a visionary, ushering in a new donor-recipient model that became the Asia-Pacific Programme of Educational Innovation for Development (APEID).

Prior to joining UNESCO, Dr. Singh gained extensive and varied experience in the education field in India, first as a State Director of Education, and subsequently as an Educational Adviser at the Federal Ministry of Education. After his retirement, Dr. Raja Roy Singh lived in Chicago where he maintained a keen interest in the role of education for the development and betterment of humanity. He passed away quietly on 3 November 2005 at the age of 87.

Past Raja Roy Singh Lecture Speakers