LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 58. ATROCIOUS ACADEMICS

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT

58.ATROCIOUS ACADEMICS

Education is for most of us only through formal schooling. And the school system is nowhere totally free.  Govt exercises its direct and indirect control in India and other countries with a colonial background; in other, so called free countries, there is a subtle system of control exercised by different groups  to different degree. For instance, you can't teach 'evolution' in many schools in the US. For the Ph.D, you can't choose a subject not to the liking of your guide, or the fund provider. You are like a cow tied to a peg: your freedom is only within the permitted area!

In India, this lack of freedom extends from the KG to the top levels, not only in the academic matters, but in many other areas, such as school timings, the number of working days and holidays, attendance, etc. There is a formidable list of control measures, but nothing actually works or holds. The newspapers are full of reports about schools and even medical colleges functioning without proper licences, how unsafe the school is for the girl child, how unhygienic, problems with the proper dress, use of cell phones, exam malpractices, etc. Thank God, we don't yet have to deal with children carrying guns to school, along with or without their pens and pencils, as in the States! ( But in my college days, one fellow threatened me with a broken blade, asking me  to omit to answer some questions, so that he could get higher marks!)

The greatest racket in India is about the so called "academic year". With about 60 days of summer vacation, 52 Sundays, 2 shorter vacations during Michaelmas- Dusshera- Christmas- Sankranti or Pongal seasons, about 30 public holidays enforced by the govt, the so called academic year is less than half of the calendar year. Then you have so many unscheduled holidays due to political agitations, death of public figures, transport strike or problems, and natural factors like rains. Our so called academic year is a scandal.

 Yet, no school or college authority is autonomous enough to declare its own schedule. What if for instance some one decides to honour Mahatma Gandhi or Dr. Radhakrishnan by working extra on those venerable days- October 2 or September 5? Or better still, what if we like to assert our independence by working on August 15 or January 26? Should we remain idle in the name of freedom? Well, just try it and see!

In our college days over half a century ago, we had more fun, and also more spontaneous and self-paced learning. We had no dress code, except to be decent, and many of us (as also our lecturers) attended classes in dhoti. Our lecturers and professors were more learned and they could really lecture, and not just dictate notes! They were literally available day and night, though their plight was described as 'the noblest of professions, but the sorriest of trades'- a reference to the poor pay! While the science and maths students had to carry their books along, we humanities and literature students were more free: we would just listen to the lectures and take our own notes, and study them later. Often, there was no one book to follow, but we had to go to the library, access different books for different topics and make out our own version of the topic! We did not have to carry any notebook,either. We would just carry some rough book or loose sheets.

All this has changed now. I watch as some youngsters in the family attend 'college' in the Tamil Nad universities, in the engineering faculty. They have strict rules of attendance. They have to carry only the prescribed books and even the size of the note-books is laid down: only 'long' notebooks, meaning of foolscap size! The very name is revealing! Not only that, they have to be neatly wrapped in laminated brown paper, and submitted to their lecturers for approval! Every other faculty is prof, asst.prof, registrar, etc, but they do not teach much: they tell plainly that some of the portions in the syllabus are new, which they had not studied; you could take  private tuition, or ignore those portions, because you have multiple choices! Yet, you cannot read any book other than what is prescribed! And in one college in Chennai, certain library books are NOT to be issued to students from the so called 'forward' communities. Also, the prize money awarded to these students will be reduced at distribution. One just cannot complain or protest!

We took our studies seriously, but one of our chief pleasures was occasional bunking! The very essence of college life is self-regulated study and we knew our responsibilities and the stakes. Still, we would skip a class or two, may be to attend a matinee show of a film or for some other work. In this respect the city (meaning Madras) colleges were our models. While colleges like the Loyola and Vivekananda were actually like extended high-schools, those like the Presidency or Christian were more liberal and free: those students appeared less serious, more fun-loving and casual, but as I came in touch with some of them later, I realised they were terribly intelligent and come exam time, they would shut out all external influences and concentrate on their studies and do well.They developed into well-rounded personalities. Later in life too, they proved more mature and generally more successful than the book-worm type, made to stick to their table and burn the mid-night oil.

But as I watch our youngsters, I realise with pain how learning is now deprived of all innocent pranks and fun. Everything is now laborious instruction- the element of strenuous self-effort and the joy of discovery is largely absent. There is no scope for experiment or a different line of approach. If you happen to come from a literary or more literate background than your instructor, you will have to suffer all the more because you will be made to conform to  the average. Nay, more; I know a case where a student whose parents were both bright engineering graduates, suggested a different way to work out a problem to a lecturer; the teacher did not only not like it, she took it as an offence and saw to it that the student was made to "fail", of all things in the "labs", not just once but for two semesters! He is still not out of the woods! I refrain from naming the university, the teacher and the student as any revelation may hurt him further. I have suggested to him to take the matter to the PM or the Education Minister. It is inconceivable that a brilliant student will just fail in the 'labs' twice! This shows the arbitrariness and atrocious practices of the so called 'autonomous' universities.

Not that these are peculiar to India. I have seen on the Net complaints about some great academic names in prestigious universities in the States seeking sexual favours from the female students! The allegation was that the university authorities always sided with the big name, made the registration of a formal complaint difficult, and life thereafter become more miserable for the student! In India, such complaints are more common in the medical colleges. Recently, there was a scandal about Harvard checking clandestinely on the attendance of the students at some classes. Well, even a learned professor need not be an engaging teacher! It always happened that a good lecturer would attract students from across disciplines. I have seen it myself. When Hridayaswamy Reddiar would talk on current economic matters, or a C.S.Kamalapathy or A.L Krishnan would lecture on English literature, half of the college students would attend them, no matter what their own subjects were! Prof. A.Srinivasaraghavan was one such popular lecturer on literature, attracting huge audiences. I have also seen that some very good scholars could not shine as teachers. But we always respected them, and their guidance was always available outside the structure of the limited class room.

Much as I like formal discipline, and realise its importance in controlling mass of students, I also feel that there is a lot to admire in individuals bunking classes occasionally. After all, if you decide to skip a class, you have to make up for it later- which imposes more burden and calls for greater resources! You will at least have to sit with a fellow student later to learn that! This incidentally is another chief pleasure of college life: group study. We always found a fellow student more advanced than us and we would always ask him to teach us things. We would always find someone who learnt poetry by heart rather easily and listening to him, we could half learn it ourselves. It was more fun this way than in the class room!  There were always some from rural areas who could not follow the English poems or essays or even other subjects and they would simply tell us: "anna, you read it for us and explain it tomorrow" I found that this was very good for my own understanding! It then became a matter of prestige for us that our friend did understand and do well in the test! This is how the group dynamics works. And how close we felt to each other!

Our academic system is such that we have to study many subjects just to pass that public exam, without which we can neither get employment nor take up higher studies. Our authorities do not simply understand that intelligence is not a specific lump but a faculty and may express itself in many subjects and situations, and that no one set of subjects ought to be prescribed for all. We have all heard that in the olden days the so called 'brighter' boys would be asked to take up science and maths- a prejudice which still continues. Yet, it is also known that the human brain is largely two sided, that the strictly rational and artistic or imagination faculties are distinct- the so called right and left brain functions. We see that some boys and girls have talents in music, arts, maths, languages, in sports and games, etc. Yet all are not recognised or equally valued. 

The concept of 'basic education' of Mahatma Gandhi dealt with this aspect. He demonstrated that any subject could be the starting point for other subjects.Taking the example of spinning, he showed how history, economics, geography, physics , chemistry and maths could be taught beginning with just cotton. Recently, Prof. Howard Gardner of Harvard has fully developed his theory of 'multiple intelligences', showing how human intelligence expresses itself along eight basic and distinct lines. Yet, the mainstream treats only some subjects as being worthy of study and recognition.

When we listen to a carnatic music concert, the average listener hardly realises the great things involved. The musician has to master the sahitya, has to have his grip on the idiom and grammar of musical theory, modulate his voice, express the bhava or emotion, blending both the meaning and melody ( ie raga and sahitya bhava) and accomplish all this within the set rhythmic pattern, obeying all the time the basic sruti, and the tala ( time) structure! The accompanists simply follow and repeat the whole exercise, without keeping any notings! This is a practical enough demonstration of multiple intelligence at work! Yet, do we regard them as academics?

During the freedom movement, many leaders thought of 'national' education. But few developed a cogent theory about it. Sri Aurobindo was one who did. He said that  merely changing the name did not make an institution 'national'. What changes if Queen Victoria college or King George college is renamed Kasturba or Gandhi College?  The whole system introduced by the British is alien: the subjects, the syllabus, division into periods of short duration, each teaching a disjointed subject, the system of vacations- all are alien in intent and content. But more than all this is the assumption about human intelligence: that the mind is something into which information has to be thrust. The mind is like a tabula rasa ie a clean slate and anything could be written! But this is totally against Indian insight. We are not all alike in our mental capacities and propensities, for we each come with our own past vasanas! We see how children of the same parents differ in their abilities. Yet our system forces the same stuff on every one, and those who are not able to cope are made to feel inferior and inadequate. But now a days, the attempt is to rate all alike. After Independence, we have simply continued with the colonial arrangements.

We have equated education with schooling. We have equated education with literacy. Some level of formal schooling is made compulsory for any employment. Yet a field like classical music demonstrates how real learning takes place outside the formal class room. In many professions like medicine, law, accountancy, the need for practical training on the job is recognised and formalised in a period of prescribed apprenticeship. We now talk of job-oriented courses. The value of education has thus been brought down as a means of earning livelihood. Real learning, scholarship, mastery of a subject, etc do not figure at all.

This is where I speak of compensatory learning. As members of a modern political society, we have to live and earn in prescribed ways. But beyond that, can we not learn and really master a subject, for its own sake? For the sheer pleasure of learning?  A performing musician is under compulsion to earn through music, so he has to compromise on many issues. What if he has another avenue of livelihood- can he not then pursue music as such?

This is how I like to think we can learn and master our Classics. Even during the British days, our languages and literature were taught. Even in Tamil Nad, Sanskrit kavyas were taught and studied till about 60 years ago. We had a generation of fine scholars well versed in three languages- Mother tongue, English and Sanskrit. In fact, during his visit to Madras, Swami Vivekananda admired how the Tamilians had both learned English language and literature, and also preserved their own scriptural knowledge. But since then the indigenous content has drastically shrunk, and is now totally out of reckoning in the official academic circles.Modern education just means a western orientation. I do not think India is ready to make a departure, even on a limited scale, even as a private initiative.We like to keep all our eggs in the same basket.

Over 65 years ago, when my uncle had taken me to visit our ancestral village, he pointed out a dilapidated shed which he said had housed the "tinnai school" where he had studied. ( I remember to have seen something like that - the 'Lahas' school'- in the old photographs of Kamarpukur, the village of Sri Ramakrishna.) In our days, schools were not known by buildings, but by the teachers. In my elementary and lower middle school, we sat for most days under trees with just a blackboard. Most of the time, we observed crows and sparrows flying around, squirrels running about,an occasional kite sitting on the roof of a nearby building, clouds floating in novel formations, etc. Who can say who taught us more- the formal teacher, or these Masters from nature? The Upanishads record somewhere: Others than men taught us!

What a pity we have equated education with structured formal instruction, and are not able to break free of the atrocious academic stranglehold!