If we can be sensitive to the fact that education for all is vital for the progress of the country, why do we in the same breath strip a certain kind of education off its value, asks Swati Pal
It’s that time of the year again — college admissions. More tears, blood and sweat are shed over these than on battlefields and in stock markets. Especially in the Capital, which makes the summer heat even more difficult to endure. What makes it poignant is the fact that it is all so unnecessary actually. If we would only move out of our circumscribed points of view, if we would stop complying with the prescriptive, if we would stop perpetuating stereotypes, life would perhaps be less traumatic. And in the bargain, we will not only help change the order of things and mindsets, but also help create a generation of confident young citizens who would be open minded and have a healthy respect for everything.
What do I mean when I say stereotypesIJ It’s like this: If your ward makes it to say, Sir Brouhaha College, which has for decades catered to students from a privileged background scoring high percentages and who later make it to ‘Chairman, Cool Dude Company’, you feel who have got it all. You feel you no longer have to worry and your chest swells up in pride as you announce the name of your ward’s institution in strident tones. One has seen parents cringe when asked where their ward studies and speaks apologetically about the not so ‘Ivy league’ college where their poor child is forced to go. ‘Oh you know the cut off was so high and s/he only managed an average 94 per cent, what to doIJ’
Dear parents, do you realise that your attitude has three terrible resultsIJ One, that your lack of respect for your ward’s institution will make her/him even more under confident and morose about his studies and about her/himself; two, that it is precisely millions of people like yourselves who have given the institution that your ward might be a part of its status; and that you haven’t even bothered to check what students from such a college do once they leave, oh no, you have written it off like so many others; and finally, you, your ward and the institution are immediately the objects of pity and disdain in society. For God’s sake and your ward’s sake, stop feeling low and stop being negative.
Stop being apologetic. You aren’t helping anyone, not your ward, not the institution and certainly not society. Get a hold of yourself and speak fearlessly about the institution. Go a step further and speak fearlessly to the institution if you have some constructive ideas that you feel might help the institution. Believe me, you will find the faculty and the administration only too receptive to your ideas as they yearn for such interactive and positive-minded individuals to raise the bar for the institution.
It is in fact this kind of stereotyping that leads to a vicious cycle. Just as students resent joining certain colleges, one finds scholars too chary about joining certain institutions as faculty. They are only too aware of and fear the ‘look’ they may get or the questions/comments they may face when they mention the name of the college they teach in. Questions range from seemingly innocent ones such as ‘Oh, is that a part of Delhi UniversityIJ’ (Shame on you for that question, you don’t know which colleges form a part of your UniversityIJ How uninformed can you get!), to really patronising ones such as ‘Uh huhIJ’ accompanied by a sneer that says it all. Why on earth should a perfectly rational, educated individual fall prey to such anxiety, you may well ask.
These are the same fears that prevent you from being happy about your ward going to a ‘lesser’ college: The fear of the label that seems to be branded on one’s forehead depending on which college one belongs to. The fear of being seen as a failure for not being a student (or teacher) of a ‘high profile’ college, the fear of being seen as not intellectual enough, hip or savvy enough. These are genuine fears for the cruelty of people at their dismissal of such colleges is only too palpable. Do you dissent, dear readerIJ You think I exaggerateIJ Yes, the truth sometimes does seem too bitter to be real but ask around if you don’t believe me. You will be told by faculty from these ‘lower rung’ colleges about how much harder they have to work to prove their intellectual worth at spaces outside their college as compared to their colleagues from the colleges that are in the same league as Sir Brouhaha College.
Irate people might say that all this is sheer nonsense and is the fault of the individual: ‘oh, s/he has a complex about the college’. Certainly, s/he does, but the reasons are complex too. And you are implicated too, dear irate reader. The tragedy is that without fine scholars who teach well, how can an academic organisation hope to excelIJ And if good scholars hesitate to join certain kinds of colleges, who plants those fears in their headIJ You do so by being ashamed if your ward goes to colleges like say Unchahi Rani College. It is you who perpetuates stereotypes.
And there are other serious outcomes of such stereotyping. It’s the evaluation season right now and many a times one hears about certain faculty members who apparently find it infra dig to evaluate anything other than papers of the Honours courses. Oh dear. So those students who do not study Honours courses do not deserve to be evaluated, is itIJ Or should one say, they don’t deserve to be evaluated by someone as bright as youIJ And the teachers who evaluate everything are ‘inferior’ mortalsIJ If one didn’t realise that it is plain snobbery that makes some people think along such obnoxious lines, one would say that perhaps such teachers lack the kind of skills required to correct different kinds of papers.
For assessment, like everything else a teacher learns to do, is an art as well as a craft. What is perhaps worse are some strange stories one hears (I wish they were fiction, really) of teachers who refuse to teach a certain paper because it is so ‘middle class’ or ‘terribly silly’ compared to a course that has a dozen ‘isms’ in it. So, we create hierarchies when it comes to the content of certain papers too! And who creates this discriminationIJ You do, dear academic. Don’t forget, it was with a certain purpose that the erstwhile ‘Pass course’ was replaced by the ‘Programme course’, a course that many now feel provides real opportunities to students through the skill-based application courses that are offered to such students.
As an academic, you do not support the idea of homogenisation but actually you are unaware that by declining to teach or evaluate a certain paper/course, you are resisting the fact that differences exist and that we cannot afford to be judgmental about them, especially because we are educationists.
The buck doesn’t stop here. look at society in general. It is exactly these kinds of attitudes that loom large and create the unevenness that exists everywhere and especially in the educational/academic world or to put it in an old fashioned way, in the world of letters. One example that is close to my heart is that of the publishing world. One finds publishers of ‘local’ or ‘national’ standing often complaining about the fact that though they have some excellent titles, they don’t fare well in the market. They say that people would rather buy a book, not half as good, if it has been published by say Thingummyjig Publishing House, UK or USA than a book published by Goodearth Publications, Purani Sarak, Delhi. This has institutional/academic ratification as well because if one looks at the way API scoring is done for recruitment, there is a wonderful hierarchy that has been created.
There are different scores for local/national/international publications/lectures with the highest score being given to the international of course. As if any academic worth her/his salt would write a ‘lesser’ piece or put in less effort just because something is local/national! The thought would be hilarious if it were not so offensive. And we have the audacity to say that we do not have a colonial hangover!
One can only appeal to those in the academic world who rue such a mindset: Please don’t let this be as it is. Please be more proactive and devise a system which makes our local/national publishing houses on par with international ones. And of course our local/national publishing houses should be very stringent about various aspects especially peer reviewing. The fact is, that given the right impetus, such improvements will happen.
We must promote these not-so-big publishing houses and we can only do so if good work is published by them. If you think you are doing good work, don’t strike off such publishers please. Demand that they maintain quality; and dear friends in the University, insist on reforms that will generate quality control and erase these hierarchies. Apply those accreditation rules to publishing houses too if need be but don’t dismiss them or rank them low just because they’re Indian! We teach students to respect the marginalised and help change their position; all very well in theory but when it comes to praxis, we contradict ourselves. We have to stop endorsing ‘brands’.
And the word ‘accreditation’ gets me back to where I started — college admissions. When will the Government realise that it is colleges that get a B grade or less that need more attentionIJ That they need more development perhapsIJ More financial supportIJ More motivationIJ Many incentivesIJ No, you think it perfectly legitimate to preserve the heritage of Sir Brouhaha College to which you open out your treasury doors, and you ignore the college that you think is way down the list. What are you achievingIJ So Sir Brouhaha College will of course move even higher up in the chain and Unchahi Rani College will languish for posterity in the margins till it becomes totally despised even by those working in it.
How easy it is for the viciousness in the cycle to wipe out a temple of learning that has the potential to achieve excellence! How difficult can it be to bring about these reformsIJ One should think that with the thrust today being on the aam aadmi, the aam colleges too ought to get a leg up. Is anybody listeningIJ Why is it necessary to give a dog a bad name and then hang himIJ Can we not usher changeIJ Can we not believe that an organisation, if led well, can easily evolveIJ Aren’t there examples of colleges that have risen from the ashesIJ Should we deny other academic institutions such futuresIJ
One last word here. Must we trash education acquired through such means as distance education programmesIJ Or the ‘open’ school or non collegiate educationIJ The same logic works here too. Deny such means of education their dignity, treat them in a cavalier or stepmotherly fashion and you have only yourself to blame for preventing a sound system of education from emerging.
In the process of education, there are no losers, we need to realise that. Education, anytime, anywhere, is the need of the hour. We promote Teach India campaigns and are proud when we are a part of it. We are all awed by those whose non formal education leaves us speechless.
We have parents and grandparents who educated themselves in the most radical of ways and in the most uneasy of times and we hold our heads high at their learning. We encourage our domestic help to send their wards to schools and some of us teach them ourselves. If we can be sensitive to the fact that education for all is vital for the progress of the country, why do we in the same breath strip a certain kind of education off its valueIJ
Sure, there may be some challenges that such modes face, some limitations that cause discomfort. Isn’t that where we, with our more normative, standardised or mainstream education, can step in and iron out some of the creases we see in the fabric of non mainstream educationIJ We are certainly equipped to do so, but do weIJ
So there’s a role you can play: Whether as parent or as an academic or as a Government official/bureaucrat, and if you play your role well, there need be no annual ritual of shedding blood, sweat and tears. Yes, be the change you want to see.
The writer teaches in the Department of English at Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi. The views expressed are her own