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COMMENTARY

Economic & PoliticalWeekly EPW may 10, 2014 vol xlIX no 19 17

Janaki Nair (nair.janaki@gmail.com) is withthe Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal

Nehru University, New Delhi.

Who Will Educate theEducators?

Janaki Nair

While Delhi University is facing

the wreckers ball, the AmbedkarUniversity, Delhi has become a

viable, vibrant space of thinking

and learning. The new political

masters must simultaneously

perfect the art of judicious

intervention to save the former

and the craft of withholding the

temptation to interfere with

the latter.

Recently, we had sobering news

that as many as 98% of teacherswho took the Central Teacher

Eligibility Test failed in the attempt.

This, after the Central Board of Second-

ary Education (CBSE) had already dumb-

ed down the syllabus following the pre-

vious years dismal experience. Educa-

tionist Krishna Kumar pointed out that

an agenda on education will hardly be

visible (or audible) as long as the high

decibel campaigns of political parties

and news channels alike dominate our

public life. But there is hope yet. The

announcement in the Bharatiya Janata

Partys (BJP) Delhi specific manifesto

(endorsing an earlier commitment of the

Aam Aadmi Party AAP) that it will save

the students of Delhi Universitys (DU)

four year undergraduate programme

(FYUP) from the waste of a precious

year is timely and must be made

more than an election promise for all

parties. Regardless, that is, of who wins

the polls.The FYUPhas now become a four letter

word among many vocal students and

anxious parents, who see no academic

merit in the dubious foundation cours-

es even as they are forced to pay for the

extra year. (As I write this, an unsavoury

skirmish between the members of the

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad

(ABVP) and a faculty member has ended

with the administration closing down

the student union!) DU has given the

term gap year a whole new meaning. Itis not a year that a student voluntarily

takes out from institutional life to reflect

on possible roles she will play in our

complex and challenging environment.

It is a year that the institution compulso-

rily takes out of all enrolled undergradu-

ates (and their parents), to produce a

calculated, dangerous boredom. Now,

with an eye no doubt on the votes from a

publicly discontented student body, the

BJP/AAPmanifestos turn attention to the

rapid changes that were introduced last

year. This should give the mandarins of

higher education a few sleepless nights.

It also gives us an opportunity to ask a

few questions about the goals and

achievements of higher education in

contemporary India.

Sea of Mediocrity

DUsFYUPwas thrust on a largely unsus-

pecting and unprepared student and

faculty body in the name of a new real-ity that needed grasping, in contrast to

the classical mode of overburdening

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theory-based dissemination of know-

ledge (from the DU website). Stock

phrases such as out of the box apart,

there was no clear assessment of the

problems of the earlier system. Neither

were the virtues of the new one spelt out

while making these momentous chang-

es. Out of the box, so far, has onlymeant jumping into the sea of medio-

crity, so that before long, college teach-

ers too will qualify for the same level

of incompetence as our schoolteachers.

Unseemly haste, rather than serious

collaborative thought, has produced

change all right, though in the direction

of precipitate and premature decline. It

is vital to rethink, if not reverse these

changes. For some time now, critical

thinking has been replaced by skill

building from the high school syllabus

upwards. Multiple choice questions and

short answers have taken an appalling

toll on Indian intellection, on the ability

of students to sustain arguments, think

deeply and evaluate information in a

complex manner. Language learning, at

one time a staple of our undergraduate

programmes, has been let go without

even a whimper. All we now have

throughout the secondary education

system is language stripped down to itsbare minimum: communicative abilities.

This has been extended to the higher

education programmes as well. Now, by

emphasising simple concept based

learning hands on training and substi-

tuting practical orientation and skills

for critical thinking, the DUsystem may

be producing mechanical operatives,

talk show hosts and event managers. It

will soon be turned into a vast system of

accreditation rather than an institution

of higher learning.

Ambedkar University

It is our good fortune that while one

institution, whose achievements have been

completely ignored in the name of 21st

century demands, is facing the wreckers

ball, another institution is quietly being

built up in this National Capital Region

(NCR). I am not referring to the multi-

tude of private universities which are

harvesting the windfall, both in terms ofstudents and faculty, provided by the

rapid changes at DU. I refer to the

Ambedkar University, Delhi (AUD) a

state university which has, over the last

six years of its existence, become a viable,

vibrant space of thinking and learning.

It has declared its mission to create sus-

tainable and effective linkages between ac-

cess to and success in higher education.

It has jettisoned the clichs, and not crit-ical thinking. It is striving to provide af-

fordable and yet sustainable fee struc-

tures. Thus far, judging from its pro-

grammes and its students, it has encour-

aged creativity and non-hierarchical

structures of learning.

WillAUDsuccumb to the iron law of

Indian institutions and quickly go

down the DUpath? What will the fate of

this young institution be in the hands of

possibly new political masters? Will the

two institutions, one a central univer-

sity, the other a state university, be treat-

ed as spaces to capture through sys-

tems which have been perfected by both

right wing and left wing regimes in this

country? Will the fledgling be given the

support and encouragement it needs,

and will the hoary institution be given

the corrective surgery it requires to save

it from oblivion?

Yea SayersKarl Marx, a discredited thinker in these

times, perceptively remarked in his

Theses on Feuerbach, that it is essential

to educate the educator himself. In these

parlous times, higher education experts,

senior academics, and thinkers have

largely been bypassed in favour of cro-

nies and yea sayers, opportunists and

political appointees. It is a sad day in-

deed, when we can only desperately hope

that the new crop of politicians will edu-

cate the educators, bring them back on

track, renew and revitalise the system

for goals that extend beyond their five

year terms. Yet, an opportunity for re-

thinking higher educational institutions

has once more opened up in our NCR.

Increasingly, in the DU case, faculty

accountability is being seen as an exter-

nally mandated, administratively driven,

procedure which now, in a move that

seriously defies all known intellectual

norms, involves the students themselvesin spying and reporting. The AUD on

the other hand, is attempting a process

of evaluation which is driven by the

scholarship of teaching and learning,

strongly focused on academic concerns,

rather than evaluative ones, and there-

fore, one hopes, on knowledge building

outcomes. The teachers and students are

seen less as adversaries and more as

collaborators in the business of learning.It is early days yet for the younger uni-

versity, so it would be premature to sing

its praises too loudly. But DU is danger-

ously close to throwing away a good,

nationally respected system of higher

education, including a complex and

challenging tutorial system, for an ill

tested, morally questionable alternative.

Both, the attacks on the older univer-

sity system and the building of a new

one occur against the background of a

shrill, high decibel clamour for private

investment in higher education (prefer-

ably foreign investment). Private invest-

ment is seen as the panacea for a wide

range of real and imagined ills. What has

largely been achieved in the health sector,

a marked and irreversible shift away from

state public health systems to networks

of private, profit-maximising healthcare,

and to some extent in the privatisation

of secondary education, will now be

speedily achieved in higher education.Unlike the disastrous fate that has

been pressed on DUby its highly moti-

vated administrators and their disturb-

ingly novel innovations, theAUDexperi-

ment teaches us that ambitious educa-

tional programmes can thrive only through

consultative processes, hard thinking

about consequences, by encouraging

creative syllabus design and by keeping,

in this grotesquely unequal society, the

twin goals of quality and equality firmly

in sight.

If these two routes to higher educa-

tion, one a rapid descent and other a

well-deserved rise, are to serve as les-

sons themselves, the new political mas-

ters must simultaneously perfect the art

of judicious intervention (to save DU)

and the craft of withholding the temp-

tation to interfere (to support AUD).

These are tall orders to place before a

political class which, judging from our

recent past, will be inclined to pack itsbags for a study tour of institutions in

the antipodes.