UGC tests aptitude for social biases
The University Grants Commission's aptitude test for recruiting university teachers provides shocking insight into the parochial and outright sexist mindset of those who administer higher education in this country. Question 44 in the multiple-choice ‘teaching aptitude’ section of the National Eligibility Test given this past Sunday asked candidates why most teachers at the primary school stage should be women. If the question stumped many, the options that accompanied highlighted all that was wrong with it. Take the first option, which read: “(Women) can teach children better than men”. Apart from the fact that there is almost no evidence to back up this claim, the statement reiterates gender stereotypes that women are better with children than men. Perhaps the examiners had in mind that in many homes it is the women who take on the responsibility of teaching the little ones. But this is not because mothers possess any natural talent in this field but mostly because fathers rarely take an active interest, especially at the elementary stage of their child's education — thanks to established social parameters of traditional gender roles. But, instead of dismantling these restrictive norms, UGC seems to be accentuating them. This is an observation that is applicable to the second option, “(Women) know basic content better than men”. It again presumes that women have some special powers perhaps that better equips them to deal with so-called “basic content”. Yet another option that “(women) can deal with children with love and affection” is equally damaging — taking gender roles back a few decades when the men went out to provide for the family while the women stayed back to care for the home and hearth.
But perhaps the most galling of all is the third option that women make for good primary school teachers as they “are available on lower salaries”. The statement tears into the constitutional basis of equality between men and women, within which is in-built another key principle — equal pay for equal work. Additionally, inherent in the statement is the assumption that somehow cheaper teachers maybe hired at the elementary level since the job is ‘basic' and does not require special skills, such as that of an astrophysics professor, for instance. Yet, it is at the elementary level that the educational foundation of a lifetime is laid. Finally, the question is as offensive to men as it is to women. Just as it traps women in the mould of care-givers, it also assumes that men are incapable of rearing children, that they are not loving or affectionate or that they make incompetent teachers because they can't handle “basic content”.