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Education
Beyond information transfer
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Make education realistic. Make it people-oriented, driven by the needs of a third world nation. Maybe we should look at ourselves and understand our problems and attend to them before we concentrate on the global and worry about international standards. The state must provide for the basic degree. Specialisation and self-financing may only follow. If we don't stand up for ourselves, who will?
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LAST WEEK I listened to two men. Soli J Sorabjee and S. Muthaiah. Sorabjee, Attorney General of India, Muthiah, journalist and historian. The experience was both exhilarating and humiliating. Sorabjee gave me hope and courage because he reaffirmed that truth, goodness and decency must determine public life. The courage to live, according to him, lies in upholding "constitutional morality" over "legality", and in learning to endure and stand by principles, rather than implode in the exigencies of the moment. Muthiah wrought me with guilt because I found it difficult to disassociate myself from the community of academicians who seems to have failed at every juncture these past several years.
The tunnel out of the morass, according to the historian, is to "completely revamp the educational system that makes robots and not human beings" and that creates exclusive worlds of specialisation, producing "technology oriented people who want to make the fast buck and sink it in the consumer market." Does it take open lectures outside the academia to confront the predicament that we are in today?
Maybe what we lack in the academic world is basic vision. If planners are kept in the secret or if they choose to remain secretive about goals, aims and desires, how may execution match policy? If parents are unhappy with the educational system, or if teachers are fighting unequal battles that exhaust their will to teach, should not somebody somewhere recognise them as plaintiffs. Why must decent, nondescript Indian citizens lose out on most battles, because most of the time we get to see policies only in execution. By which time it is too late for revision or change.
The UGC Tenth plan advocates dual degree. Do even those in the academia know why? What are the benefits? Why is a three-year BA degree inadequate? Does dual degree promise flexibility in subject choices? At the college level why must science and technology courses enjoy more funding and priority than humanities. And the simplest question of all: how does education develop the human mind without a tradition of liberal arts, without contact with the community and the neighbourhood, and without the essential experience of service learning? I go back to stories. Impacts have happened when in an innocuous general English class you introduced someone to a story about a man or a woman who was stripped of rights. The story may have been by Maheswata Devi or Amartya Sen. Or you impressed on someone that it was no big deal not to be a management trainee or a research scholar, and that working as a sales girl was not demeaning, because choices came with circumstances, and that no matter what, people will respect you for what you are. Or you pointed out to someone that no doubt you were impressed with the job offers that were flooding in, but couldn't she think of an educational loan and apply for a graduate programme in Berkley that she had always wanted to do. Of course impacts also happen when classrooms have electricity generated in discussions, arguments, contradictions and reflections. Challenges and reassurances are what teaching requires because teaching goes way beyond information transfer, no matter how hi-tech the process.
The Indian context and endemic problems of corruption, bureaucracy, and feudal thinking have to be understood. Classrooms are such potent areas for students to come into their own regarding knowledge, rights, stances and self-respect. They also provide preliminary testing sites for activism, and in particular criticality of voice: must they speak or remain silent; will their voices be heard and accepted; what is rewarding: anonymity and passivity or passion and conviction. Education must enable students to apprehend power, not powerlessness; in which case challenges will begin to include deprivation.
And the facilitator. What of the teacher's position? Most of us in the teaching community are in an extremely painful situation today. We earn very little respect from the community; we hear snide remarks about our pay almost everyday. Academic standards are falling with a rapidity that is traumatic. We work endless hours that include teaching and preparation and examination relaxed work, and paper work.
Lack of motivation and lack of direction can be demoralizing. The State treasury is thin and therefore all appointments are stalled, irrespective of retirement, resignation or health. College managements, already under financial stress must create funds for salary payment for non-governmental appointments, must create scholarships for students, must make provisions for exigencies. We are incidental; which is better, voluntary retirement or compulsory retirement. Bodies such as NAAC and UGC demand proofs of competence/excellence (including Xerox of the content/title page to authenticate your publication in journals) reducing you to faceless survivors in a market that invites foreign competitors. Teaching cannot be clocked and measured. It requires elements of soul and grace, and environments that even if they may not be friendly, may at least appear not demoralizing.
Where does that leave us? Without education who are we? This seems to be our only hope against vested interest in poverty and ignorance. Why don't we look around, take things in stride, understand what priorities are, and recognize that exclusive rights to education, violate all norms of decency in a country where millions are struggling for water, food, health and self-respect.
Make education realistic. Make it people-oriented, driven by the needs of a third world nation. Maybe we should look at ourselves and understand our problems and attend to them before we concentrate on the global and worry about international standards. The state must provide for the basic degree. Specialisation and self-financing may only follow. If we don't stand up for ourselves, who will?
Susan Oommen
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