Indian English

“I want curtain material”.

That was the monsoon (since kerala doesn’t go strictly by the spring summer, autumn pattern) of the year 1976. I had just joined the most reputed women’s college in Changanasserry and wanted curtain for my room in the staff hostel.

The sales man looked blankly at me for a moment, and then said “We don’t have it here”.

“What”, i exclaimed. You don’t have curtain material here?”

“No’, he said mulishly. “We don’t have it here”

I was not prepared to buy that. I stood there looking around to see if i could locate for myself what i was looking for. This guy must be a discontented employee like that bus conductor in ALL ABOUT A DOG.

Sensing a deadlock, a more senior salesman came up and asked me what i wanted. I repeated. “I want material for curtain”.

“Can you explain what that is?”

“What curtain is?” stupefied, i asked. “Don’t people here use curtains?”

“You explain what it is. Then I’ll tell you”, the senior salesman assured me.

I stared at him incredulously. By then a few more salesmen had joined us, to join the fun. Many seemed amused and enthused. There was some excitement in the air about the outcome of the demand of this strange woman who walked into the shop with sunglasses which she pushed to her head (where it still remained) after she entered the shop, and wore choli blouse instead of the back open, open necked blouses that were popular in Changanasserry, and had painted nails and coloured bangles that went well with the sari.

“You know window?’ i said little desperate drwing a large square in the air. I was a bit embarrassed by the amusement i was affording them. “That strip of material that you put through a spring and stretch across the window- - - - - ‘. I was acting out the act of pulling a new spring across the window fter having hooked it at one end. There was a lot of grinning an exchanginsg of glances between the sales boys gathered around me.

But I didn’t have to complete. In a chorus, all of them said in unison said, “Oh! Kurrrrrrrrrrrtan. She means kurrrrrrrtain”. And they all laughed and dispersed.

I didn’t know then that the English that exists outside the phonetic class is a totally different ball game. The mid central neutral vowel in English that we have in such words as curtain, mercy has always posed problems for malayalees. But then i realised all that only after i stepped out of college into the malayalee world. During my stint in Mumbai much later, i came to know that the Marathi tongue had trouble getting around the vowel sound in words like hen, bread.

“Do you have pain?” C asked me as we were standing at the office counter to sign in the muster.

“No” I answered perplexed. “I have no pain’, I answered smiling, as i took out my pen from my bag.

C looked angrily at the pen and said,“ You said you don’t have PAIN and what is that”, she said pointing to the pen.

How can i tell her that i didn’t follow her pronunciation, especially since she and her friends entertained themselves the previous day in my presence over the mallu accent which at that time was the subject for a Hindi serial too. She’d think I’m giving it back to her.

So i said nothing. It did cause bad blood between us. It was a catch 22 situation. I remained silent and the story of how kochu refused a “pain” did a huge circulation among the teachers of the college. But better mean than ridiculing a person’s “English”. Like a Marxist friend once told me, we bloody Indians, we still suffer from colonial hangover. We equate education, sophistication and efficiency with proficiency in English. I think he was not fully wrong. I remember, a decade back a Malayalam professor took over as the Principal of the college where i worked. All were sceptical about her, cos she was ‘after all a malayalam lecturer’. But, she proved to be the best principal the college ever had. With an unparalleled vision she took the college leaps and bound ahead to put it among the colleges in the league of the handful of A rated colleges(rated by UGC’s accreditation committee) in the state.

One can have visions in Malayalam too!

What’s the purpose of this post? It’s to emphasise the need for an official Indian English, which should factor in the existing deviation among the Indian users of English from the RP and Standard English. The Standard English and RP are irrelevant in India. Like V K Krishna Menon once said. We in India did not pick up English from the streets of England but from classics. The present day user of English may not enjoy an intimate relation withclassics. The point VKK was making was that a non native speaker picks up English from the written word and not the spoken. So the ears are not tuned to the way language is spoken. Besides, the influence of mother tongue plays a major role on the non native speaker of English. Like for example the vowel sound in words mercy, map. Catch them young, and every speaker can overcome that difficulty. The problem is not with the pronunciation alone. Idiomatic English too sometimes doesn’t come too easily to an Indian speaker who is fluent in English.

As the utility of the English language is increasing by the minute, we should keep politics aside and acquire competence in the language. We don’t have to look westward for a model. Here in India we have one. Some call it convent English, others, metro English. Whatever the name, it refers to that English which is intelligible to both by Indians and the English speaking world. The reasons are 1. It does not follow the British stress pattern. It distributes word stress equally as should not be done in queen’s English (hence easy for the Indian listener). 2. It has devernacularised vowel and consonant sounds without going all the way British. Hence, on account of the second fact, it is easily intelligible to the speakers of English the world over.

This English – this Standard Indian English, should be taught uniformly in all schools in India – compulsorily. The phonetic drills need not be modelled on RP, but after the neutral accented Indian English.

With India growing into a super power, the Indian variety will gain recognition the world over. After all, the dominance of a language is determined by economics. The Anglo-Saxon English became the base of Standard English cos it was the dialect spoken in the East Midland region, the commercial hub of Great Britain from the fifteenth century.

To conlude, i must share with you an interesting experience i had when i found myself in a social gathering of academics and their families in Texas.

“You speak, British English. Because India was a British colony?” asked a professor’s wife.

I nearly fainted. I’ve been used to people telling me i speak mallu English, every time I step out of kerala, and here was an American saying that i speak queen’s English. Could she be pulling my leg, i wondered and looked suspiciously at her.

Seeing the perplexity on my face, my daughter told me “amma, you don’t have the American drawl. That’s what she means. Also, you used certain English idioms not very common here’.

“Like?”, i asked.

‘Yesterday, you used the expression ‘donkey’s years’ and my American friend remarked rather admiringly on the typical British nature of your language?. !!!!!?????

My my my! Uncle Sam too is jet lagged after all these centuries! He too hasn’t fully recovered from colonial hangover!

Obama at it again.

Education arms race with India and China! That’s the latest verbal gymnastic by the President of the USA.

Ever since he settled comfortably/uncomfortably in his official chair in the Oval office, Obama has been harping on the threat posed to America’s future by ‘those’ Indians and Chinese. This othering of this particular group with its ubiquitous presence in the USA which has been reeling under recession, is a dangerous trend. Obama’s first outburst in December 2009 coincided with the beginning of assaults on Indian students in Australia. This had caused many a moment of anxiety to Indians who had someone close to them studying in the USA. Obama’s repeat performances make us suspect that he is trying to unite a racially divided country – create a dangerous nationalism - by whipping up a sort of xenophobia. The strategy of creating a Barbarians (substitute Indians and Chinese) - are -coming type of scare among American youth in order to motivate the latter to go to school could trigger off the revival of the dot buster phenomenon.

Guess the president is hardly concerned about such insignificant issues, but his indiscretion causes fear in parents for the safety of their children slogging it out in the universities of the USA, or pursuing careers there.

Yesterday’s newspaper carried reports of Australian government’s anxiety that there is likely to be a reduction of 80% students from India this year. The huge financial loss is a matter of serious concern for them.

When is India going to wake up to the reality of the shameful lacuna in the field of higher education in the country? There is no shortage of brilliance here. The basic infrastructure for education is well in place. It is in the field of research that we are shamefully behind even many Third world countries. It is the quest for excellence in this field that drains our country of aspiring students and professionals. It is not just a brain drain. It is a gigantic economic drain too.

Now that the Bill for the introduction of foreign universities has been tabled in the Indian Parliament, universities like Virginia Tech, Georgia Institute of technology, Lancaster University have already commenced talks on the setting up of campuses in India which will follow the same system as in their countries, and will award UK/US Degrees. The government should expedite matters to enable not only the setting up of these universities, but also their smooth functioning. The Education Minister should stand by his promise of creating a customised regulatory framework separate from that of the existing state aided Universities. A sort of SEZ should be created in order to keep them free from the reservation policies, unionism and the bureaucratic controls that give rise to frustrating delays, and corruption.

India should set up her own research centres of excellence too, and ensure smooth functioning without government interference, trade unions meddling, campus politics and corruption.

Centres of excellence in research are already there in plenty. Collaborative and twinning systems are already functioning smoothly. But these are a mere drop in the ocean of the burgeoning aspiration of the twenty first century India gearing itself to take on the world in this Knowledge era. The State should participate in this effort to set up these centres of excellence in research. With the foreign players on its soil, we can rise to meet the new competition as also be a competitor who gives them a real tough run for their money.

We know the government can find money to invest in tertiary education and research Centres, if it has the political will. The helium balloon of the commonwealth opening ceremony can vouch for it.

It should also give incentives to corporates to establish academic research centres.

Let us, for goodness sake do everything we can to give our aspiring youngsters the facility they so badly require. We most certainly have the resources.

What ARE we waiting for? We don’t have all the time in the world!

Truth has set me free – the English language and me. In a rambling mode - -

I think every human being is an artist. Every child, unrestricted by the dos and don’ts and fatwas that shape our minds in straitjacket moulds, is an artist. Its unfettered mind sees the world through the prism of unconditioned imagination. As it grows up, there are two ways in which it can develop. It can cling tenaciously to the perspective innocent of life’s schooling, thereby develop double vision as its thinking gets regulated into stereotyped notions. Or it can discipline its life within the rules and regulations of society and wean itself out of the inherent artistic mode of thinking. The first is an artist, in the grip of divine madness. The second, the sane human being – that predictable creature that we all prefer to deal with.

Not my original, as you’d have guessed. “Remember Wordsworth’s “Trailing cloud of glory do we come?”

Well, I think I belonged to the first category despite the cast iron strait jacket mould that I was yanked into by the extreme conservatism of my Syrian Christian community. But I’d have struggled to set myself free from it into the world of creativity had I the word , the signifier.

I lost my word power when I got estranged from my mother tongue. With switching over, in the 5h standard, from Malayalam to French as my second language, my severance from literary Malayalam was complete. Then followed a long period of shallow existence in the world and culture of the English language. The fascinating space around me created by the English nursery rhymes, children’s books, comics, classics, bestsellers sucked me into the vortex of a world I had not lived except in my imagination, while physically inhabiting a Syrian Christian home in the small town of Cochin.

Feelings and emotions - intense and overpowering- struggled within me, seeking an outlet I could not provide –for I was caught between two worlds, one created by an alien language, the other, the flesh and blood world i physically and emotionally existed in but whose language i was alienated from. The latter, the real world I was rooted in, afforded exposure to a number of varieties of Malayalam – the refined language of my parents and relatives, the language of siblings and cousins with whom I had fun times during vacation, the vibrant language of the helpers at home, those potent carriers of oral tradition, pulsating with the confrontational experience of the rough life of the fifties and sixties. Yes, that was my language. That was the language in which I felt and thought; that was the language that coursed through my blood stream.

Tragically, when I reached that age when one gets into the grip of that urge to pen down one’s thoughts, words failed me. The English language did not have the resources to express my thoughts and feeling. I didn’t have sufficient mastery over it. After all, how much of it can one have over an alien language? In utter dismay I looked at the huge chasm between the innermost ME and English, the only language in which I could express myself in writing. My sensibilities could not find corresponding utterances in the alien tongue. I was not Tess or Grand Sophy, but Kochuthresiamma alias Molly, the last but one in a large Syrian catholic family, thrown into the rough sea which first the girl child, then the adolescent and finally the woman had to navigate with considerable difficulty in order not to lose her individuality and power of independent thinking.

Despite its extreme patriarchal culture and hypocrisy, the real world that I inhabited was a rich and beautiful one with a lot of love, gentleness, benevolence, benign human values, and customs & practices steeped in secular traditions evolved from 2000 years of give and take, learn and teach interaction with diverse religions. At the dining table, my father spoke about the story of the evolution of Kerala culture. Being a history person he discourses had the accuracy of history and the authenticity of lived experiences. My mother spoke about it all the time, hoping to perpetuate through me the tradition which she was handed down. The seamstress Cicily thathi and Rosa cheduthy in whose company i found myself very often, filled my mind with stories of local origin, folk lore and myths handed down orally. I had it all in my blood. But i couldn’t speak or sing.

I was a broken muse.

I partly blame the way i was taught the English language. AS a child, I was made to believe that it was the most sacrosanct thing on earth. This, unfortunately, happens in convents. This happens at home too. My people were proud about my comfort in the language. As far as they were concerned, my incompetence in the mother tongue was well mad up for. Sister Kevin who taught Wren and Martin grammar made it appear that any violation of rules warranted severe disciplinary action, something equivalent to a firing squad! The English Language became to me a potent deity, an inflexible tool that would not bend in the hands of a Malayalee Nazrani girl who wanted to tell her tale. So i never wrote.

Till

After research –when i was well into thirties. My area of research included the damaging impact of colonisation on the Indian mind. My perception of the English language underwent a sea change in a matter of three years. When i looked back ,i wanted to kick myself for having allowed ridiculous, intimidating notions to stifle my muse. It’s not as though i didn’t know all along that
· This angrezi language was nonexistent before 600 AD or
· It is the most illogical language on earth, the reasons for which i knew only too well
· That the language was considered barbaric by the refined cultures of Europe
· That the grammar and rules appeared only in 18th century, till which time it was a free for all
· And some of these rules were most laughable as they were modelled on Latin from which English did not descend causing them to stick out like sore thumb, and which therefore tended to get flouted by native users, the only faithful followers being the educated colonised!(Colonised in body, mind and soul, UGH!)
· That English achieved this status only in the colonial world.
· That it is a utility language which the world respected grudgingly ‘cos there was a time that the sun never set on the British Empire.

These and many more factors could have exposed to me the clay feet of this language which was given more than its due in the subcontinent. The History of English language which i was superficially familiar with from my early twenties should have broken the oppressive hold this language had on me much earlier. But for some reason it didn’t. It took me three years of intense reading during my research to break free from the inhibiting chains with which the English language kept me a prisoner.

So, now my attitude is
· What the heck. Whatever you want to say, say it. If your grip over the language isn’t good enough, to hell with it. Say it in whatever way you can. Forget the impropriety of the usage. You loyalty is to yourself, your story, not to the language (though i must confess i won’t go as far as ‘nose poking nenjamma’).
· It is usage that determines the precepts, not the other way round.
· When the British colonised the world and then left behind their language, they lost all proprietorship over it. Each region cannot but inevitably manipulate it to suit its requirements. These are not mistakes but differences, which if officialised will acquire the respectable status of a ‘variety of English’.
· The Queens English born in east midland region on the banks of river Thames close to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, is a misfit in the little state of Kerala and becomes effete in the hands of the non native users in this distant geographical location with its very different climate, culture and whatnot, unless the user is able to relate to the language without the colonial slavishness.

These auto suggestions did help, but sadly, i was long past the age of creativity when the film fell from my eyes.

Higher Education in Kerala - from Mediocrity to More Mediocrity

The best way to treat a disease is to arrive at a diagnosis and then treat the cause. The Kerala Higher Education scene generates a plethora of diagnoses, most of them right but not fully right. There is no convergence in the various diagnoses ‘cos the conclusions of all education pathologists are coloured by some agenda or the other.

Ministers, politicians, people from the industry and eminent people connected with education have come up with views on what ails the system of education in Kerala. But then, this has been going on for decades, and with each passing year, things have only changed for the worse. Knowing fully well that diagnosis alone cannot be a panacea, I too am adding my theory to the ever growing mountain of futile theories. After all, having been a beneficiary of the education provided by the state and a person who pursued a career in the Kerala Education Service, I can with some authority provide a few home truths which figure prominently in informal conversation in our circles, but rarely get a mention in official documents or media reports regarding state of education in the state.

A cliché but I’m repeating it. The greatest damage to education in the state was done by the infiltration of political concerns in decision making. The de-linking of the Pre Degree from Colleges was staggered for many years as it would have rendered supernumerary not just the teaching staff, but also administrative staff in the universities. In Kerala, progressive measures in education get invariably linked to non academic issues, and the casualty is always the quality of education. Successive Governments dragged their feet over the de-linking, and finally when it finally took place it was on account of pressure to comply with the requirements of University Grants Commission, the national funding body for education.

The quality of education is the quality of the teaching professionals. Has any one of the governments made any investigation into the reasons for the stagnation of college teachers in Kerala once they enter service? With brickbats, both the authorities and the other stakeholders in the education sector are generous. College teachers unions are very active but their concerns are not remotely connected with creating, maintaining and improving teaching/teacher quality, and they do not voice the discontentment of the majority of teachers who know they are not able to give their best to their profession. The reasons for this situation are many.

A college teacher in Kerala spends the best part of her career valuing papers. One cannot grumble about the internal papers of the periodic exams that the college conducts. It is a test of how the students she teaches learns. But the university papers – those huge gigantic bundles which double up in size the minute you cut the restraining cord – oh that’s the bane of every teacher. They come throughout the year. No season for it. Sometimes they come ten times in bundles of sixty (A small bundle, madam, says the university employee who manages to talk you into accepting). Sometimes they come in three hundreds, four hundreds and even upward. And during summer vacation, there is this centralized valuation.

What else is the government to do, you might ask. Well, before I give an answer to that let me tell you that these papers are not the papers of regular students alone. The universities of Kerala perhaps have the largest number of private candidates. Is it fair on the part of the authorities to bank on the teachers of regular colleges to deal with these astronomical numbers of answer books?

How does this take away from the efficiency of the teachers? Well, this evaluation duty more than takes away from the efficiency; it simply terminates the growth of the teacher. A teacher, first and foremost, has to be a scholar. Scholarship does not come from the guides available in the markets a dime a dozen. Acquiring scholarship is a continuous and slow process. The mind of the teacher must evolve by the minute, no, by the second. How is it possible for a teacher to read, research and learn when her mind, in the course of her career, is ever engaged in the effort to extricate herself from the avalanche of examination papers under which she permanently exists?

With the onslaught of the NAAC (authorized accreditation committee) visits, the teachers’ duties have tripled. The guidelines of the NAAC accreditation are laughable, imported wholesale from a totally different education scenario, and applied without factoring in the indigenous conditions. And colleges desperately scurry to meet the requirements, on account of the ratings, and the prestige and funding that go with the rating. Events are organised, practices are introduced to satisfy the NAAC demands - and documented religiously. And who does this documentation? The teachers. Colleges have begun to live from one NAAC visit to the next and the focus of the educational institution has shifted from its primary function of imparting learning and education to its wards to pandering to the NAAC, so that they get good scores.

And the internal assessment. I have in my earlier education blogs exposed the gigantic farce called the internal assessment. Their relevance in the present context is the time a teacher has to spend doing this absolutely useless business of “continuous evaluation’, which involves running after reluctant students to submit their work, giving good marks despite knowing that the work is either plagiarized or substandard and then keeping the registers updated. All of which dig into the precious time a teacher should be spending updating her skills.

So a day in the life of an average teacher consists of 3 to 4 lectures (I e 3 to 4hours), preparing for those lectures, valuing university papers, valuing periodic exam papers and valuing internal assessment work, documenting activities. On and off, she is bound make that pilgrimage to the University to collect the exam papers to be valued, and transport them home at her own expense. The pittance the university gives for this purpose will not take these papers beyond one kilometer.

How much time does all this leave one with for research activities and or a quiet time in the library browsing through books or reading?

Now that the salaries of teachers have been hiked substantially, the authorities are all out to make this category of professionals sing for their supper. And how, is what matters. Ideally, the move should be to make it mandatory to improve qualification, to publish, and make promotions and even tenure based on academic performance. But with the unions flexing their muscles for a smug existence, this is not likely to happen. Instead, more university papers, meaningless assessments and clerical work will descend on them, denying any hope of improvement of the higher education picture in Kerala.

Solutions? Oh yes, they are a plenty. But the first mandatory step for all solutions is to delink higher education from politics. Think kerala will ever have the political guts and will to do that?

More to follow.

Ruminating on Blog Responses

It might be only a tiny storm in the teacup brewing in my blogspace (triggered off by my post Burqa War) but to me it was a revelation and a coming to terms with a certain truth which I would not have missed had I read the writings on the wall instead of playing the ostrich.

And the terrible truth is that Young India is divided on the issue of secularism.

One section of educated young men pooh poohing the very idea of secularism the way my peers and I understood and internalized it, is a matter for serious worry. To them, those secular values that shaped the weltanschauung of my peers have become an anachronism.

Wonder how this happened. The post independence generation to which I belong believed that all Indians – Hindus, Musselman, Christian, Jain and Buddhist – are my brothers and sisters who will someday live like a large happy family.

What went wrong?

The constitution? And we grew up thinking India has the most democratic constitution!

Today, no one is happy. Neither the majority nor the minorities.

The secularism we believed in was built on a ‘live and let live’ policy and respect for all religions. The constitution, we believed, would ensure an equal space for all religious groups in the polity of the nation and there would be no state interference in the religious practices so long as there is no violation of fundamental rights.

Also, Minority Rights and other reservation policies were looked upon as an arrangement to give equal opportunity to those who were outnumbered or downtrodden for centuries. It was a way of providing a level playing field for a diverse population in a democratic dispensation.

And we believed all this - we believed in the constitution and the well intentioned reservations. Sacrifices and making space after all is part of nation building. Looking back, I realize that we believed ‘cos those who taught us the history of India and the nature of its post independent dispensation in the high schools, taught us with passion in their voice and pride and stars in their eyes. Not surprising, given that they grew up in an atmosphere charged with patriotism and a faith in the all inclusive model of democracy fathered by the Mahatma.

Unfortunately, the socioeconomic changes post independence reshuffled the century old economic order, and the losers of this change among the majority group had no privileges to resort to. This led to resentment, which in turn put the minorities on the defensive, giving rise to a vicious circle of action and reaction in many parts of the country.

It must be admitted that the minorities seized upon the privileges bestowed on them constitutionally as inalienable rights, became very possessive about them and often stretched the privileges to the point of offending the majority community.

A vast oversimplification, I know, but I was only constructing a rough scenario to show where the Machiavellian politicians stepped in and exploited the communal situation to serve their megalomaniacal ends.

When and how it happened I do not know but all on a sudden we realized that these politicians had invaded the campuses and cast a magical spell on the youth. And thus began the beginning of the end of young India’s faith in the visions of the founding fathers.

And this is not all. Corruption entered and became the order of the day in the Indian polity. The mode of development created many a discontented groups in the margins. The political will to address the terrible economic inequality was conspicuous by its absence. This undesirable atmosphere vitiated by self seeking politicians is what today’s youngsters have inherited. Any wonder that cynicism should prevail with regard to secularism and all those values imbedded in the constitution of our nation? When we dreamed in the early sixties, the world, despite all its problems, lay before us like a land of dreams – ‘cos there were dream merchants selling idyllic visions passionately in schools, in media and in the homes. Today’s young India has the failure of those dreams as their experience of the young democracy, and for mentors, it has hardened criminals/ Machiavellian politicians, ever on the lookout for chelas whom they can exploit and use as pawns in the dirty power game. The youngsters grew up hearing from these anti social elements, stories about the delicious taste of power.

So what if power corrupts, they are not ashamed to ask.

I was surprised to read a comment which protested against the banning of politics in the campuses as it amounted to banning ‘progressive’ activities!!?? This, he argued, gave rise to communalism among the youth! As a teacher from Kerala where the educational institutions are the breeding ground for cantankerous and ruthless politicians, I strongly disagree with this statement. Of course, we have had a few shining stars among politicians who came from the youth wings of parties; but they are exceptions rather than the rule. How campus politics can be termed ‘progressive’ when we have known cases of brilliant students being moulded into hardened criminals and goondas and goonda kingpins by campus politics, I simply fail to understand.

A college in Kerala with a long tradition of having produced many illustrious sons to serve the country in the highest and important positions, has today the dubious honour of having produced a new breed of political goondas who, with their muscle power, assist politicians in their mission to acquire disproportionate assets. These goondas are groomed to break every law in the country, indulge in violence and murder for their political gurus in exchange for protection and asylum.

Islam Bashing.

Another distressing fact that emerges from the blog responses is Islam bashing. A cursory glance at the comments of the blog visitors of my post Burqua War will show what I mean. While I agree that the minorities in India often forget that they are privileged, I cannot fall in line with these Islam bashers. Their strategy is to point to the past. They quote history – selectively and bypass the power politics (clash of civilizations, as it is now finally and honestly christened) dating back from the Crusades continuing through the imperial rhetoric in which Islam was demonized and finally down to the present times when the imperial countries manipulated world affairs with the greatest ease to become the self styled arbitrators of the destiny of oil producing Islamic nations. These are realities that no one can wish or will away. One cannot isolate the origins of Islamic fundamentalism from these truths.

I think we should turn to history to learn how not to make the mistakes of the past. Let’s not turn to history to find sticks to beat any group.

I would say religious leaders of all groups have failed secular India. With each one baying for his pound of flesh I would say “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”. The religion I follow very strictly teaches “Give to Ceaser what is Caesar’s”. It can’t be any different in other religions too.

The Agnostic Angst

And finally there is another category that has become vocal in the blogsphere– the atheists/agnostics. Most of them opt for it out of disgust for the religions that are polarizing the nation. To this category I’d say: Adopt a live and let live policy. Centuries have taught us that humans need God. Having said that, we should do everything in our power to create that felt need among our countrymen to build an India where Humans, Gods and the Godless can live in perfect harmony.

The Burqa War

MANGALORE: The Sri Venkatarama Swamy (SVS) College in Bantwal has restricted a first year BCom student from attending the class till she conforms to the regulations of the college, which is not to display her religious identity, the headscarf. (Times of India)

This is a very sad development indeed. After all, this is not France or Australia or Canada but secular India where the citizens have come to take in their stride the differences in the attire of those belonging to various religious communities.

Don’t students belonging to all communities display symbols of religious identity? What about the Bindi? Or the scapular or the rosary? Why single out the head scarf or the Burqa alone?

There was a time in India when Christians (in Kerala) went to school/college in mundu and chatta, Hindus in their set mundu and Muslims with their headscarf. For these students who came to acquire learning, these differences in the dress were no issue. They represented the plurality that was our pride. How much India has moved away from this situation!

The saddest aspect of this event is that the protests originated from the students, the clearest of indications that the citizens of tomorrow have their minds poisoned by communalism.

The first on the list of priorities of an educational institution in a pluralistic society like India’s is to inculcate secular values – like respect for other religions which includes tolerance and acceptance of religious markers. An institution that tries to throw a wedge between communities is unfit to be in the field of education, where religious tolerance, harmonious existence, respect for other religions and respect for differences should be held up as the highest values of civilization.

It is significant that this is happening in Karnataka, a state ruled by the BJP. Funny, how the party has not learnt its lessons after the drubbing it got at the hustings. The party can start packing up its bags in Karnataka after its shameful sexist and communal track record. The assault on women by lumpen elements of the communal outfits that mushroom and flourish under the BJP umbrella and the unofficial fatwa issued against people from the majority community who interact with the minority, are events which are still green in the minds of the electorate.

It becomes exceedingly difficult to understand this regressive movement in India which facilitated the rise of a communal party, all the way to New Delhi. The anti Muslim posture of the party – is it a political necessity or a genuinely ideological position? Or is it a type of fascism that infects the narrow mind which draws its identity from a narrow cultural and religious context? Or a combination of all these? Academia is replete with attempts to locate the issue in the historical site but speculations have given rise to theories and theories without credible answers.

Or

Is it a reaction to globalization inherent in which is the possibility of eventual loss of identities of religious groups? Like the last convulsions of a dying animal? Can the religious activism across the world- of all religions- be explained in these terms?

Can’t help thinking about John Lenon’s Imagine.

Back to the issue. the brainstorming of the BJP which just concluded in Simla is causing anxious tremors among the peace loving citizens of this country. Fascist voices are drowning those of the moderates in the party. Political strategies are being spelt out to regain power from where the party can position itself to launch assault on differences.

***

Below is given the rest of the news item from TOI.


The student Aysha Asmin, after objections from saffron-leaning students, was told by the college management not to wear the headscarf, which she started wearing after the college had prevented her from wearing the burqa.

Aysha has not been attending the classes from past 12 days. Trouble started after the college elections. She alleged that college president Bharath started heckling her for wearing a scarf saying that they too would come wearing a saffron scarf.

"He was taken aback when I said I don't mind. I don't even mind wearing a saffron scarf", Aysha told TOI. After this, harassment continued, but Aysha was stoic till it reached a flash point when the principal told her not to attend classes.

Aysha's father clarifies that he admitted his daughter to the college only after clarifying that there would be no issue for wearing a burqa in the college with a lecturer.

Kerala Not Ready for Semesters

Kerala University has deferred semesterisation of degree courses while MG University has gone ahead with it this academic year. In North Kerala, public property is being destroyed in protest against semesterisation! In this context I’d like to share my take on this issue in the blogsphere.

I beg to disagree with the claim of the government and AKPTC that the new academic structure of degree courses will improve the quality of higher education in Kerala. Two semesters per academic year will replace the annual system at the degree level. Much as i hate to be a prophet of doom, i have to say that this change will only add to the existing chaos which will ultimately be sorted out by compromises and dilution which are bound to affect quality negatively.

Conducting seminars of stake holders on the issue of restructuring the degree level into semesters was, most certainly, a laudable move. But that was hardly enough. Before the government plunged into this important reform, it should have imperatively conducted an honest enquiry into how the existing semsterised degree courses were functioning in the various colleges. There are several vocationised courses sponsored by the UGC which follow the semester system. If someone is bold and honest enough to look beyond the statistics and supposed performance of these courses, many distressing truths will surface.

The truth is that semester system can be successful only if the colleges become autonomous. In the existing affiliation system, it will not get the desired results. The requisite learning culture does not exist in the latter.

1. The conduct of Examinations

There is an inherent weakness in the Examination system in our universities and this will prove to be the biggest obstacle in the way of success of this move to semesterise at degree level. The Examination section – the administrative - needs to be revamped drastically to avert the chaos that the higher education is likely to witness in the coming years i.e. after the semesterisation at degree level becomes effective.

The Office of the Controller of Examination is the most overworked and overloaded section in all the universities of Kerala. The Examination Section is already struggling to handle the work of the existing undergraduate courses which have the annual system. Semesterisation would double the work, but not the efficiency. The Universities are unable to publish on time the results of the few semester courses that already exist in the affiliated colleges. Timely publishing of the results is always bogged down by administrative hiccups. If degree course is semesterised, utter pandemonium will prevail. Unless, of course, the administrative system is streamlined in a manner the universities of Kerala are incapable of doing, given their union ridden work force.

2. Internal assessment.

UGC believes, and rightly so, that the semester system, with its constant monitoring of students would enable skill development. But it is unrealistic to hope to achieve this “constant monitoring” in Kerala colleges which have anything between 60 to eighty students in English and Language classes, and 40 in core subjects.

The continuous monitoring system through internal assessment already exists in the colleges in Kerala. Unfortunately, this is a huge farce. It is bound to be so in an affiliation system. 20-25 percent marks are allotted to internal assessment. Since ranks and performance of colleges are linked to marks and pass percentage, first class percentage etc, no college will take the decision to give the students only the marks they deserve to get. Colleges which have made an honest effort to do so have suffered with their pass percentages coming down, or missing the university ranks their students should otherwise have secured. In the affiliation system, with many colleges coming under the same university, the competition, far from improving the quality of teaching and education, leads to doctoring of results of the internal assessments.

The students are smart. They know the college will not risk failing them as it will affect the results. No matter how badly they do, they will be awarded a certain minimum marks. I have seen ridiculous situations where the students grow so indifferent to the internal tests and assignments that the teacher is forced to go after them and pursue them till they submit something to be marked!

Autonomy should precede the Semester system. The rating of autonomous colleges is not relative as in the affiliation system. Autonomy gives Independence in designing syllabus and evaluating the students. If semester is introduced in the present affiliation system, the only effect it will have is to increase the work load of the teachers, add to the chaos in the examination system - all with no advantage whatsoever to the students and the learning process.

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What ails Higher Education in India. - A Wholly Inadequate Answer!

My previous post suggesting that the govt of India invest heavily in education in order to provide internationally competitive higher education in India set me thinking about the issue.

Brace yourself. This is a long post, but straight from the heart.

The issue is not a simple one. At the micro level too there are serious problems to be surmounted. I guess this can be best explained by relating a couple of experiences as a teacher in the existing system.

After completing my research, I rejoined my college. I had to teach Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey Lines to the Final year BA English major students. With the recently acquired knowledge of the research methodology and tools that enabled one to break free of structured thinking, I tried to introduce a novel approach to the poem which for decades had been doled out to students in the same stereotyped and over simplified manner through the end number of cheap (in terms of price and quality) guides that were available a dime a dozen in the market. I gave a couple of titles which provided a different reading of Wordsworth and the Romantic poets. I was a fool not to have noticed the skepticism in the eyes of the students, even in the brilliant ones’. In a week’s time, a colleague told me confidentially that the students were complaining to the Head about my unconventional approach. Before the HOD pulled me up, I went back to age old interpretation of Tintern Abbey Lines, gave the probable essay questions and brief notes and gave the answers based on the most popular guide available in the market.

What my colleague told me quite unsettled me. I understand they complained to the HOD that if Miss Molly teaches the way she is doing, they’d all fail in the exams.

I’ll be eternally grateful to that lone student who came to me after I reverted to the accepted stereotyped style of teaching. She wanted me to go ahead with the way I’d started. She was amazed that there were other ways of looking at so canonical a poem as Tintern Abbey lines.

“The standard interpretation, we can get from any guide”, she had told me.

It was truly a vindication of what I believed but could not translate into practice on account of a systemic flaw in imparting education in our state.

These happened18 years back.

Just five years back, I ran into trouble again with my effort to update students’ learning process. I asked for an assignment to be done by the students themselves (and not by some typist) in the Microsoft Word. I insisted on bibliography and footnotes. I told them it did not matter how much cut & paste they did so long as they acknowledged it. I assured them if the entire work is cut and paste, I’d still give them marks for their skill in selecting and organizing facts in a coherent, logical manner. But I also told them(that was my undoing), that I’d give them only the marks they deserve, and that I’d fail them if they deserved to, and they would have to redo the assignment to my satisfaction if I were to give them pass mark. In other words, they had to EARN their marks.

I wasn’t aware of the seismic under currents triggered off by the project I gave them, till, the head of the institution who was a well wisher of mine called me quietly into the office and told me that there were complaints that I was harassing the students! I told her all I wanted was to give them a taste of doing an assignment using internet information in a sensible manner.

“You mean well. Our students are not ready for it (!!!!!!!!??????), she told me. ‘They feel this might affect their internal marks and put them at a disadvantage WITH the students of other colleges. Besides, they find it involved too much expense”!!!?

Once again I backtracked. Once again, I failed.

I can give you any number of such failures. Sometimes I wonder if I lacked conviction myself. That could be why I didn’t have the guts to pursue a task well begun.

But I console myself with the thought that I was fighting something much bigger than myself and did not possess the muscles for a one man army.

I was fighting to improve an educational system evolved to deal with astronomical numbers of students (unlike in the US or Britain or Australia). I was trying to beat a system which had to resort to and continue to follow the colonial legacy of the affiliatory system, in order to keep track of and control the management of the Himalayan task of subsidizing and educating the huge number of students who flooded into colleges after Independence. The ideal thing at that point of time was to dismantle the exiting system which was meant to produce good and obedient servants of the empire, and evolve a new system more suited to the post colonial India. But we chose to continue the existing one which by the time independent India took over had become fossilized into a partially effective system. Renovation of a structure is more difficult than building a new one. The ad hoc improvements and improvisation did not really make much of a difference for the better.

To make matters worse, in the post colonial era, in Kerala state, people became so intensely conscious of their rights that the universities and colleges became the hotbed of union activities - a fact which tied the hands of successive governments in bringing about changes, particularly in the examination /evaluation system, which I honestly believe is to be blamed in a major way for the failure of our education.

My shameful failures in the episodes I mentioned earlier too were on account of the examination system we have in place in the colleges today.

The examination system in most universities and their affiliated colleges is flawed. It doesn’t really test the quality and learning of the students. The absolute predictability of the question papers is the villain of the piece. The students seem to think that it is their right to be tested by a given pattern year after year. This is how it works:

The university designs syllabus for a course. Within a month’s time, the market becomes flooded with guides which identify all probable questions and gives answers – for essays \ brief notes.

Then at the end of the year, the appointed paper setters for university exams make questions as per the universities prescribed question paper pattern. These paper setters, I am sad to say, have in their possession all the popular guides from which they, more often than not, choose questions. Any question that requires intelligent use of knowledge acquired during the course of study would instantly raise a hue and cry from the students, teachers, parents and unions. The university then gives instruction to examiners to go lenient on that particular question. The leniency is usually in the form of minimum pass mark for that particular question.

Predictable question, predictable answers. These are the rights of the students respected by all universities. The system is such that the intelligent student can pass with flying colours with minimum learning. Originality in answers is dangerous. So teachers – both in science and humanities – teach from “the examination point of view”. Everybody is happy with this teaching. Students, because there is no demand on their intellects or skills and the effort they need to put in is minimum; teachers ‘cos readymade material is available and the examination results enhance their egos; colleges because their students produce good results and the credibility and rating of the college go up.

The spoon feeding method suits all.

The casualty, of course, is education, one purpose of which is to inculcate that grand passion for research and knowledge.

A decade back, the universities introduced the internal assessment practice by which 20-25 % marks was given by continuous assessment through the year. The intentions were good. It was an effort to give room and importance to original work, performance of student in the course of the year and to make up for the flaw in the existing examination system. But now this has become the biggest hoax. In addition to adding to the teachers ‘workload for no good purpose, it contributes to lowering standards in a big way. Every college issues a fatwa to its teachers to give minimum pass mark to all students and not to fail them at any cost. If one college decides to follow the spirit of Internal Assessment system, it will reflect on the overall examination results of the college. Students from that college who deserve “UNIVERSITY RANKS’ (indicators of the quality of the college) will have to make way to less deserving ones from other colleges on account of the conscientious policy of the college.

So the entire process of internal assessment is a huge farce, whereby substandard submissions and test papers ultimately earn the student a minimum of 12/20. Another 20 marks in the university exams and the student passes! Border line cases enjoy moderation as a matter of policy. It brings credit to the state government that so many pass percentages are registered every year during its term.

I have heard stories of student union leaders threatening teachers who wish to mark fairly for internal assessments!

This is only one millionth of the tip of the iceberg of flaws that beleaguers the Indian Universities. As I mentioned earlier, the difficulty of dealing with huge numbers and the burden of subsidizing education in the country has watered down the system of education.

Despite this, our graduates fare exceedingly well in non Indian universities.

Perhaps, the system has inculcated a never say die attitude and a capacity to learn in our youngsters that make them fare well outside.

We need to investigate and find out what it is that makes our students tick outside India, and build on our strengths.

The infrastructure, though flawed, is there. We need to fine tune it, up grade it so that our graduates will not have to leave the country to seek higher education in countries where they become victims of racial discrimination.

Only a commitment, political will and depoliticisation of educational field can enable the government of India to address this issue effectively.

Racism Down Under - Wake up Call for India

The solution to the resentment towards Indian students who can afford education abroad does not lie in diplomatic efforts. That’s a stop gap and contingent solution. But the real long term solution lies in India improving the educational infrastructure in the country.

With the type of media coverage it is getting, there is likelihood of this resentment spreading to other parts of the developed world which have been wooing Indian students both for the revenue (income from international students is a major source of revenue for Australia) they bring and their contribution to research. But racist attacks are often beyond the control of the governments. Its increase in these difficult times of financial meltdown is an indication of the rightful-heir-being-denied –the -legacy –by-the-adopted syndrome. This is the most dangerous type of resentment ‘cos at the bottom of it is the feeling of righteousness, of fighting and killing for a just cause.

In addition to this is this branding of Asians as terrorists. The Indian students in Australia have reported that they often have had to confront hostile queries about whether they are Afghans or Pakistanis, and whether their jacket conceals bombs!

It is the most undesirable situation that we have here.

Why does a country like India which exports such a huge number of techies and researchers to the world, depend on these developed countries for quality higher education for her students?

Sixty years of independence is a long time. The issue should be addressed aggressively. We have the educational infrastructure. It’s not as though we have to start from the scratch. We have to bring them up to international standards. There are a few suggestions to address this very serious issue.

· Keep Centres of learning totally free from politics. No unions, be it those of students, employees or the teaching faculty.
· Invest hugely in research infrastructure.
· Provide sufficient funding for deserving researchers in place of the shameful pittance doled out to them now. A decent package will attract to our universities the best hands that, in the present scenario, go to foreign universities for quality, state of the art education and become vulnerable to shameful racist attacks.
· Offer enviable package to the faculty. This will attract the best hands to the teaching profession. This move is already set afoot in the country under pressure from the UGC.
· Attract funds by offering very attractive tax benefits to corporates who donate to the cause of education in proportion to the profit.
· Have in place a fool proof accountability system for the universities.
· Ensure efficient administrative machinery in the universities. The red-tapism that is the bane of any university with government funding is a huge drain on the resources of the university in terms of time and performance.
· Every state should have such universities in proportion to its population.

None of these is impossible or unrealistic suggestions. WE only need the political will to do it. It is time the people of India began to clamour for it. If we let things by, the status quo will continue.

Only the crying baby gets milk.

Perhaps the wails should emanate from the blogsphere.

Catch Them Young and Safeguard Secularism: The Need For A Central Board For Regulating Textbook Contents

http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/15/stories/2009041555871100.htm


I remember, as a school going child, my day at school began with India is my country, all Indians are my brothers and sisters being shouted out in as many pitches as there were students in the general assembly in the quadrangle. The immense beauty of that cacophony!!

That practice, sadly enough, appears to have vanished from schools now.

I do not know if this practice was prevalent in all the states in the country, but as a student in schools in Kerala and Tamilnadu , I remember vying with the students around me to be heard when I proclaimed my Indianness, my fellow feelings for the other Indians and my love for my country. It was a good practice. It had a subliminal effect on me, and had a role in creating a sacrosanct aura around the concept of ALL INDIANS ARE MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS, irrespective of caste and creed.

The site given above, which appeared in Hindu op - ed page a couple of days ago, is indeed distressing. It talks about injecting communalism in the minds of unformed, tender minds of children in Gujarat as a strategy to usher in Ram Rajya. Indoctrinating communalism in young minds can ensure only intolerance and violence in these future citizens. We see it happening with the Taliban and other fanatical religious groups. The world is reaping the harvest of uncontrolled violence sown through ‘religious’ instruction divorced from secular humanitarian values. An irony, ‘cos religion cannot be divorced from these values.

Now, the RSS-run publishing house in Gujarat has taken a leaf out of this practice of catching them young and poisoning their minds. Yes. It is poison. Hatred is poison. Any text that legitimizes and officialises hatred and violence is poison. Detoxification of the collective mind raised on such ‘righteous’ hatred and violence is a near impossibility. The process of communalizing the tender minds of Gujarat is in full swing now, if the article is to be believed. The motive is political – to ensure vote bank in future for a divisive political outfit.

The centre must step in. Not only in Gujarat but in all states and monitor and regulate the text books prescribed for schools, right from the nursery where, in some states, it is reported that pictures are shown demonizing minority groups.

We need a central regulatory board, totally apolitical in nature, comprising intellectuals of renown. The Board should have a set term and should not be dismantled every time the Central Government changes. Political appointments should not be entertained. Regarding the text books, social studies and history text books should have the same content through out the country The state specific chapters and lessons should be designed by the state board which should be governed by the central board. The content and syllabus designed by the State Boards should be prescribed and published only after getting the approval of the Central board. The state boards should be given strict guidelines to conform to ALL- INDIANS- ARE- MY- BROTHERS- AND- SISTERS CONCEPT.

I wonder if this sounds crazy but unless some bold step like this is taken, India’s secular credentials will become history. The process of sabotaging it is already in the works. A generation anchored in lethal communal ideology is emerging in Gujarat while intellectuals and industrialists sing paeans to the Gujarat mode of Development.

I foresee the type of comments this post will throw up. I will be questioned on why I have no problem with Christian indoctrination and Christian nations’ indulgence in violence through history, or the cracking down on the Sikhs after Indira Gandhi’s death, or Islamic terrorism. Why single out Gujarat alone?

My answer is this. I do have a problem with all this. I do have a problem with every religious or political outfit that brainwashes young minds into accepting hatred as a laudable emotion, and violence as a permissible tool for achieving desired ends. No religion justifies violence and murder. True, Christian nations from the middle ages onwards have indulged in the worst form of violence in the form of Crusades, Holy inquisition etc. But these are shameful chapters in the history of civilization which no one should emulate. These dark, cruel and shameful happenings should not be used as justification or precedence for inculcating hatred among people. The attack on the Sikhs or terrorists attack elsewhere in India are no justification for a State government to officially indulge in the type of indoctrination in the name of Hinduism which is a great religion of peace, a religion which does not provide space for violence. The engineering of the text books to create a generation of hate filled Hindus is NOT the way to counter Islamic terrorism. My problem with Gujarat is that communal politics is slowly but surely gaining legitimacy there, and the path is being made clear to make possible a theocratic state within ten years. For within a decade these fledglings who are being systematically indoctrinated through schools will become competent practitioners of communal politics characterized by hatred, violence and exclusionism.

Let’s remember that much quoted saying that an eye for an eye makes the world go blind. Gujarat is heading for this blindness, for seeds of vengeful hatred are being systematically sown in the minds of the children by the official machinery. All that talk about the sensational and successful development agenda of the Gujarat Government is a ruse to deflect attention from this dangerous, long term strategy to destroy the secular fabric of India.

Globalisation Of Higher Education

(Leafing through an old College Magazine, I came across this article I'd contributed. Thought I'll post it , 'cos I still hold the same views. Read on, if you have the patience. It's long, I warn you)

Some time back I attended a seminar on Higher Education vis a vis Globalization. A premier educational institution in the state had hosted it. The two-day seminar proved to be a very disturbing experience. It was revelation of how rhetoric can take a right about turn before our very eyes without us noticing it.

The meeting began with chief convener’s introductory speech on the ‘higher education Sector’. Yes, like public sector, private sector, energy sector, heavy vehicle sector, we now have higher education sector! Like all “sectors”, we have the producer, the stakeholder, the consumer, the commodity, profit and loss, and the eye ever straying to the bottom line!

During the entire course of the two-day seminar, no one spoke the social problems thrown up by globalization. No one spoke of the implications of globalization in a developing country like India. No one spoke of marginalization as an inevitable fall out of globalization. Not a word about formulating a Higher Education policy with the agenda to deal with the inevitable creation of a section of humanity that is likely to fall by the way side in the new order. No one had anything to say about redefining the function of higher education in India against the backdrop of the mammoth human crisis thrown up by the implementation of the triple slogan of liberalization, privatization and globalization.

But discuaaions revovled around the possibility of churning out youngsters capable of starting off with six-figure salary. God, when did this reduction of Higher Education to an industry take place? Needless to say, one does often see the product selling style of marketing education in the newspapers and at educational exhibitions. But this seminar was a platform provided by an institution which once took pride in giving leadership in inculcating social values though education; and to hear education being discussed in the language of trade and commerce alone, in paper after paper, by speaker after speaker – well , it came as something of a shock; it becomes hard to digest the fact that within the hallowed portals of this institution, all those noble thoughts associated with higher education were conspicuous by their absence, and education was allowed to be equated to mere technical expertise!

The modus operandi was interesting. Politicians and bureaucrats with their own axes to grind stole the show with their grand eloquence. While the minister waxed eloquent on his grand plan of transforming Kerala into an IT savvy state which can throw up that much valued human commodity for export, one bureaucrat spat fire and brimstones, and in high astounding terms spoke of the magnificent castles in the air that children should be taught to build, because in this cyber age these castles need no longer remain airy ones.

The outcome of the two-day programme was the ratification of the theory that mass production of highly competent professionals was the ultimate aim of higher education. All the teachers from the various colleges who came to attend the seminar were mesmerized by the sight and sound of the celebrities. No protests were raised from dissenting quarters for fear of being branded or ridiculed. Creation of individuals sensitive to human issues, social responsibilities of education -I shudder to think of the ripples of merriment that the very suggestion of these concepts would have generated in that charged atmosphere.

The papers presented by participating teachers dealt with the nature of higher education, the methods of teaching in the context of the IT revolution, globalization etc, etc. Excellently researched papers and well presented. But no one had anything to say of steering education, both higher and lower into a direction that would take the students in to the heart of terrible human issues that India of this century is bound to be beleaguered with on account of the inevitable course of liberalization that she had to take. No effort was made to enlighten this elite gathering of intellectuals on the danger of the chosen mode of development. No one drew attention to the deliberate and systematic attempts by the consortium of global corporates, to condition tastes and norms in order to successfully commodify cultures, women, poverty, everything. No mention of the need for a game plan to create a discerning mind in the younger generation in order to enable them to see through the discourse that assaults them from all sides. No word of caution against neo colonialism. Instead, all such fears were dismissed with celestial contempt as quixotic shadow boxing.

The seminar was a terrifying experience. If guardians of the high values of education speak this language and discard the other, it is time for genuine worry as to where civilization is headed. At that seminar, a silent consensus was arrived at on the definition of higher education as a tool for creation of human commodities for survival in the new order where many are bound to go under. After all isn’t that the law of nature, the survival of the fittest ? And social values are man made not nature’s or God’s, aren’t they?

Education in Kerala - What a Shame!

I was talking with my 80 + & 90 + in-laws, and once again the thought came to me - it comes every time I converse with people of that generation - that they had a much better education than what Kerala offers in the present day.

Their comfort level in English, their awareness about the world around them, their sense of history, their knowledge of geography are way above that of the students I had to deal during my teaching days. Even as a young school and college going student, I’ve heard my parents talk of the school system they had in their time – and seeing the product that the system produced, I begin to feel that we should go back to those days.

All schools were Malayalam medium till 4th standard. A student who wants to continue in Malayalam medium gets promoted to 1st Form and goes on uninterrupted till she reaches 9th standard, which is the school completion point.

The student who opts for English medium education goes, after 4th standard, through the Preparatory class which gives them intensive coaching in basics in English. After that they go to the 1st Form. School education becomes complete with 6th form.

And I find that, that generation was educated in the true sense of the word. Being a teacher by profession, I can make this statement with authority. Our parents did not have tuitions, or ‘educated’ parents to help them with studies at home. But their standard in written English (spoken too if they were employed in positions which required them to use it) would put not just today’s SSLC students, but also graduates and post graduates to shame. I am not resorting to hyperbole to drive home a point- it’s the plain simple truth.

Yes. I think the education minister should sit up and take a look at what education has come to since the time of his parents, and try remodeling on those lines. Am sure it’ll produce marvelous results.

Of course, a necessary condition would be de-linking politics from reforms relating to education sector. Take a look at this case to see how different things are in other states. A Polytechnic affiliated to the SNDT University in Mumbai offers, among other courses, a diploma in Office Administration and Secretarial Practices. The students are screened for their competence level in the English language the very day they join – an entry level test as it is called. Divisions A & Division B are formed based on the results. Intensive training in spoken and written English (an imperative for the profession they are trained for) is given to the Division A comprising low scorers in the English entry level screening test. In the second year, both the divisions sit together, for, the students of A division would have improved their communication skills in English. There have been instances where those who scored high in the entry level screen test opt for A Division on account of the intense coaching in English they would get.

Try introducing this practice in Kerala. The DYFI and SFI and KSU and SUCI will be on the streets destroying public property and indulging in murder and arson to end the ‘bourgeois, elitist discrimination’!

Of course, it is not fair to put all the blame on the govt and the system for the decline in the quality of education in Kerala. Over the years, Keralites have grown to take education for granted. Our rulers in the pre independence days did us a wonderful service by starting schools in every nook and corner of the state. Our parents’ generation was the first full fledged takers of this education. They valued it. I remember my father telling me that he used to walk miles and miles to attend school. Today’s generation skips classes on a hartal day if they have to walk only walkable distance to school or college. And with subsidies and stipends, education has become cheap. And what comes cheap is not valued, but taken for granted.

And the fees my parent’s generation paid might sound trivial to us in these days when we speak in terms of crores. The women in the thirties had to pay Rs3 ¾ pm whereas men had to pay Rs. 5. The fees for preparatory around that time was Rs.2 ¼. In the school which my mother-in law attended, the boarding fees was 22 idangazhi of rice (1 idangazhi = 1 ½ kg, I think) and Rs. 4/. My father who graduated from Maharaja’s College paid Rs. 5/pm as his hostel fees. All these people I had spoken to sometime or other, swear that their families had to make immense sacrifice to make that kind of payment in cash or kind.

That generation PAID for their education - paid through their nose. They were not imparted education with the tax payers money. So they valued it. And the beauty of it all was, they had no mercenary attitude to it. Education was not considered a mere stepping stone to a job. It was a simple case of love of enlightenment, love of education for its own sake. Many beneficiaries of education in those days went back to their agricultural occupation which they could have managed without formal education. And most women remained housewives. But their education gave them a certain quality difficult to describe. To say that they were resilient, faced life’s wear and tear with a philosophical shrug, and became addicted to reading (and to Malayala Manorama in the Mid Travancore region), is to illustrate only some of the ways in which education impacted them.

The present day scenario is very depressing. As a teacher I have seen how students come to class and sit there bewildered when I start to teach in English (unfortunately, I am a teacher of the English language). If I ask them a question and insist they answer in whatever broken English they know, they’ll look at you with such a trapped expression that you excuse them hastily lest they send you running for smelling salts! Of course there are exceptions but the general rule is this.

What has gone wrong? Where and when? All the ‘progressive’ reforms have only made matters worse. Why isn’t anyone doing a serious study on this issue?

This year Kerala registered an all time high in SSLC pass percentage. That it was a political decision, there is no doubt. The situation at the moment is: there are many students who cannot not be accommodated for Plus One, despite the tall claims of fair admissions through Single Widow Admissions. The best beneficiaries of this crisis are the political parties. All those SSLC passed students who are not likely to get admission into schools form a veritable goldmine for parties to get recruits

What has gone wrong with Kerala education is, as I see it:
Politicization of all decision, including reforms related to admissions, examinations, pass percentage, fees - the works. The populist reform of introducing group system in SSLC to allow more and more students to pass was the first major death knell to education in the state. More and more electorate friendly reforms followed.

So, what is the role of academics in this scenario? Well nothing - except be happy tools in the hands of politicians and political parties.

What a fall from the days of yore!.

In the meanwhile, I hear the requiem being sung for quality education in the most literate state in the country.

And the red carpet that had been rolled out for mediocrity has been extended to welcome sub mediocrity.

Come Entrance Exams and - -

When I joined service in a college, some thirty years back, in a small town in Mid –Travancore which I had always associated with extreme conservatism, I did not bargain for the type and size of talents displayed by the student community. The intra-mural competitions were big events which stretched on for weeks. The classical music competitions used to be held over a period of two days. The folk dance and classical dance, both solo and group- each of these events took two full days to complete. The judges were well known experts in their fields.

The long and short of it is – every other girl could sing or dance ,or sing and dance, or respect these forms of art. Parents spent a lot of time and money to train their children in whatever form of art their wards were interested in or had talent for. Students spent a lot of time and energy to become accomplished in their chosen fields.

Today, in the same college, getting students who can give quality performance is no easy task. Those who do volunteer to do it, more often than not, lack calibre, expertise. Classical music and dance have given way to cinematic (now banned – the term I mean)dance and film music. Not that there is anything wrong with or inferior about either. It’s just that they require little or no training. In these days, when making value judgement is considered a mortal sin, I make bold to say that those were good days, when young minds were put to rigorous but enjoyable training to master the complexities of classical art forms. Those were the days when the students and their parents believed that to acquire skill in classical forms of art was a worthy enough mission, and that there were things as important in life as the entrance exams - which brings me to the villain of the piece.

I do not remember in which year the entrance exams to professional courses were introduced in Kerala- but the decline of interest and engagement in arts and fine arts mentioned above became instantly felt after the introduction of this phenomenon. I hear stories of how school and pre degree students who were being trained either in music or dance were abruptly taken out of these classes and admitted to coaching classes giving training for the entrance exams. Kala was cut down to size. But the sense of rhythm inherent in human nature cannot be suppressed. Fortunately, the TV which quietly made entry into every home in Kerala provided plenty of models of disco/cinematic dancing. Centres which taught disco dancing began to appear in big towns in Kerala where young people went to shake a leg in order to fulfill their urge to sway to rhythm.

What the entrance exams have done to Kerala – at least in the part of Kerala I speak of –is, they have enlightened the parents about the futility of art. Traditionally, Kerala was a place where it was believed that training in some form of art would enrich the experience of life, train and discipline the mind, add a deeper dimension to personality, and also enable one to deal better with this business called life. This inherited wisdom was uprooted and blown away overnight by the hurricane which came in the form of entrance exams which descended on the state in the eighties. I tend to compare my pre-entrance with the post-entrance students. The difference is not in how they dance on the stage. It is in how they conduct and carry themselves, in their weltanschauung and the way they face a crisis situation. The pre-entrance lots – they were respectful but they could challenge you in class. They were involved in the happenings in the classroom. You entrust them with a job, they would do it with such heartwarming earnestness and sense of responsibility. They would sometimes walk up to you and ask whether you would recommend this book or that, or if their understanding of some book they'd just finished reading was right. They somehow gave you the feeling that they believed that learning was its own reward. They made you feel happy and grateful for being allowed to contribute to the learning process. And they made your heart swell with pride when they interrupted your lecture with ”Ma’am, aren’t you contradicting yourself?” For they were genuinely interested in the process of education. They had the time and inclination to actively engage themselves in the process of holistic development which educational institutions attempt to offer. And the post-entrance generation? Well, they are different. I guess it is the prospect of the entrance exams looming large and intimidatingly before them that makes the difference.

Sweeping generalizations, I know. I could be wrong. But a huge change has come over the attitudes to life in the post entrance days, both of the parents and therefore of the students. It would be naive to attribute the change in the timbre of the student personality to decline of interest in arts. But I can safely say that this disinclination for anything other than entrance test related activities is symptomatic of this change. And I prefer the good old days.

I’ll conclude with a small incident. A few of weeks back, my friend’s college- going daughter started quizzing me about how to get a book published and how to get a publisher to accept a book. She’s always been a quiet one and so I was surprised. I asked her about this sudden interest. It’s not sudden, she told me. She writes short stories -it’s a passion with her. I remarked that her father, who himself writes extremely well, must be excited about her interest. She kept silent. A couple days later when I met her parents, I talked to them about this. I was told in no uncertain terms not to give their daughter any bright ideas. Let her first learn to earn her bread and then she can think of writing, I was told. But what harm does a little bit of writing in free hours do, I persisted. She ought to be studying, and not wasting her time indulging in such useless exercise.

Guess we live in times when man lives by bread alone.

Doctor or Engineer - by hook or by crook

Kerala is a strange place. rather, it’s truer to say that keralites are strange people. they carry certain mulish ideas thru their lives, and to whichever part of the universe they relocate themselves to. one such notion is : if you offspring is not a doctor or an engineer, you are a failure in life. thus it is that we have this hilarious scramble for medical and engineering seats. the other day, a friend told me her relative paid 25lakhs as donation to secure a medical seat somewhere in tamilnadu for his son who did not want to become a doctor!

I am a humanities person and an acqaintance of mine once had the temerity to ask me of what use my education is of to humankind? needless to say he is an engineer whose monthly salary is more than all the money I have ever earned, or will ever earn, even if I live for another hundred years.

with infinite patience, I used, initially to explain to those who posed similar queries that it takes more than docs and engineers to run this world. tried telling them life is not about science and technology alone – it also about philosophy and history and economics and commerce and logic and art, all of which which bring you closer to life and makes you understand this business of living. I couldn’t then quite guage the expressions on their faces when I uttered such sentiments. older and wiser, I have now learned the art of decoding human facial expressions. In retrospect, those faces which suffered me when I lectured on the relevance of a holistic approach to life mirrored their pitying attitude to a sour grape blabbering of a ‘woman’.

coming back to my acquaintance who questioned the utility of my existence, I now realize the crux of his attitude. be a doc or engineer and you can mint money. not that I don’t like money. I love it. but I am not prepared to bulldoze my children, or anyone for that matter, to become docs and engineers just because there is a mountain of currency waiting at the end of the road. nor am I willing to sacrifice everything I care for - like job satisfaction for one thing - for a huge bank balance. My take is this: if a person wants to become a medical practioioner, it is a great thing – if he has the competence, compassion and the dedication for this noble profession. if a person wants to be an engineer, it is a great thing, with the gigantic technological leap that the is happening now. but if a person doesn’t want to be either, please please leave her or him alone to explore and experience other areas. this big world is a land of opportunities, also for people other than docs and engineers.

I would like to tell all the fathers and mothers of kerala not o be heartbroken if your son/daughter does not manage to get a seat in a ‘professional’ college, or does not want to go to one. there are a huge number of people in this world eking out very decent living without an engineering or medical degree.

HIND SWARAJ - GANDHI'S THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION

Written way back in 1916, Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, which is a is a critique of the then much hailed “ modernism”, has a chapter on Education. Very unambiguously, he explains his strong views on the system of education introduced into India by the British. He himself was a beneficiary of this system but he claims that he had to unlearn what he learned from this western education in order to fulfill his dharma.

In order to appreciate his views – which will appear outlandish to us, as it did to his readers then – we too, will have to, like Gandhi, liberate our mind from the conditioning that it has been subjected to by the legacy of four centuries of colonization.

This is what he had this to say about the western concept of education (Gandhi’s quotes in bold italics followed by my limited efforts to understand/interpret his views.)

Gandhiji: What is the meaning of education? It simply means a knowledge of letters. It is merely an instrument, and an instrument may be well used and abused. The same instrument that may be used to cure a patient may be used to take away his life, and so may a knowledge of letters.-----------
me: The concept of education that we inherited from the British aimed at increasing knowledge but not wisdom, and intelligence but not the intellect. The failure of modern civilization is the de-linking of the former from the latter, in both the cases, for which the modern education is largely responsible. To this divorce of knowledge and intelligence(literacy?) from wisdom and intellect( education in the true sense?) can be attributed the headlong plunge of modern civilization into disaster on a global scale. It is in this unfortunate severance of literacy from education that we should seek explanation for, say for instance, nuclear research prioritizing the destructive potential over the constructive. Just imagine, what a different place this world would have been if the resources spent on developing nuclear bombs were directed towards energy and medical research! This is an example of how education becomes an abused instrument.

Gandhiji: The ordinary meaning of education is a knowledge of letters. To teach boys reading, writing and arithmetic is called primary education. ………………………..Our ancient school system is enough. Character-building has the first place in it and that is primary education. A building ( by this he means modern education based on western model) erected on that foundation will last.
me. Gandhi strongly believed that education should imperatively impart morality and values that would create in the individual self- respect and respect for others, make him conscious of the spiritual being in him, train him to tap the strengths and potential that lie therein and sensitise him to his role and duty as the member of a superior species. In short, basic or primary education should focus on enabling the student to internalize the concept of dharma. Once this is achieved, modern education can be imparted – ‘a building erected on that foundation will last”, for then, there will be no misuse of that instrument called education. Science without conscience, development without humane considerations, a worldview without factoring in the variety in human circumstances – all these are the products of the narrow definition of education on which the western model is constructed. He goes on to say . . . .

A peasant earns his bread honestly. He has ordinary knowledge of the world. He knows fairly well how he should behave towards his parents, wife, his children and his fellow villagers. He understands and observes the rules of morality. But he cannot write his own name. What do you propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters? Will you add an inch to his happiness? Do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or his lot?------- - - -
me: the last sentence. that is exactly what colonization did - alienated communities from their traditional culture, from traditional way of life. The new order, mistakenly believed by the colonizer, to have universal applicability, was imposed. The biggest loser was the African continent. India was affected, but not irretrievably, for she had a highly evolved value based culture to fall back on – a fact that is recorded to have confused the colonizer. They often mention that even the most anglicized Indian, even with his western education continues to remain an Indian at heart.

Gandhiji: Now, let us take higher education. I have learned Geography, Astronomy, geometry etc. What of that? In what ways have I benefited myself or those around me? Why have I learned these things? Professor Huxley has thus defined education: “ That man I think has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will…..whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the fundamental truths of nature…whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of tender conscience ….who has learnt to hate all vileness and to respect others as himself..”
If this is true education, I must emphatically say that the sciences I have enumerated above I have never been able to use for controlling my senses. Therefore, whether you take elementary education or higher education, it is not required for the main thing. It does not make men of us. it does not enable us to do our duty.
me: It is important to note that Gandhi believed that the primary duty of education is to make “make men of us”. Gandhi repeatedly reminds man that he is a higher being than the beast. What distinguishes man from the beast is his dharma consciousness. Any system of education that fails to instill this dharma consciousness, or ‘fails to make men of us” is worthless.

Gandhiji: In its (education’s) place it can be of use and it has its place when we have brought our senses under subjection and put our ethics on a firm foundation…..
me: Modern education is constructive or rather becomes not destructive only when its recipient has evolved spiritually enough to be in total command of his bestial self; ie when the material man is managed by the spiritual man.