Written by Saumya Malviya
We live in achievement-centric times. And achievement here is more about record-keeping than any qualitative transformation one can effect. Often leading to a pathological preoccupation with doing things, an individual is valued insofar as they are steady suppliers to an insatiable machinery of data, now working more for its own sake than any actual function it was designed to fulfil.
When it comes to university education, the most direct casualty of this bureaucratic fixation with measurable-quantifiable outcomes is the good old teacher in the now bygone mode. Most of us with any kind of university education would recall professors and teachers for whom giving themselves completely to their disciplines and to their students used to be a way of life. It was not just a profession. Often going beyond their mandate to teach specific subjects and preparing students for exams and degrees, they sustained institutions by devoting their lives towards building their character and embedding them within time-honoured traditions of learning and justice. Even their supposedly administrative and institutional roles were not mere bullet points on a résumé, but duties discharged as active stakeholders. This accounted for robust and carefully steered societies of theatre, debating, music, etc., from which emerged many luminaries, but most importantly, thinking and empathetic individuals. Even when placed in more traditional “admin” duties, they often emerged unscathed, despite the expected privileges and pulls of high office. The roles of proctor, principal, dean, HOD, teacher-in-charge, etc., were perils of being in the profession, but they yearned to return to packed classrooms and fusty canteens brimming with intense yet banter-filled conversations.
This should not be construed as an attempt to paint a rose-tinted picture of the days of yore. Such teachers were, in a way, always a minority. But at least they made the count, without, in any way, sacrificing who they were. The students looked up to them, as being good teachers also made them exemplars of social and institutional living. Certainly, it was a tricky slope, often teetering on idol worship, but the best among teachers took care to withdraw from the spotlight, lest reverence and praise make them complacent. If they understood the value of being an example, they also appreciated the importance of retreating quietly at the right time before their students’ success was attributed to them or they were seen as bigger than the processes they served.
Today, when the number of publications and patents and the amount of funding received are used to assess a teacher’s worth, it is hard to fathom that classroom lectures once managed to generate fresh insights and critical reflections. It may be said as a counterpoint that AI has made the traditional lecturing mode obsolete, but this knee-jerk response fails to see that technologies, even as simple as writing, have to be negotiated and deliberated upon. And what better place to exercise free discussion than a classroom! AI amasses knowledge, but the pleasure and purpose of learning lies in the process, the sheer thrill of ideas happening right before your eyes. The challenge of AI has to be met without being an AI denier and in a way that places humanity at the forefront. The teachers I am talking about were best described by their gentle and sometimes stern midwifery of ideas and their subtle displacement of technologies of efficiency by ontologies of patience.
In the obsession with measures, these are the figures who are being rapidly forgotten. Ironically, even when various checks and controls seek to further streamline academic growth and make it more monitorable, institutional autonomy and independent thinking become more and more jeopardised. And students have even less to learn from their teachers the more adept and in tune with times they become. As this becomes increasingly normalised, one remembers figures who were out of hinge with progress in a liberating sort of way. One just hopes this remembrance (if at all it is shared by others) isn’t reduced to nostalgia. One hopes that, somehow, it keeps alive the aspiration of becoming a teacher. The chances of that look bleak though — at least until institutions are systemically nurtured as dialogic arenas, instead of being turned into permanently unsettled spaces in the name of adaptability, innovation and, of course, rankings!
The writer is a Hindi poet and Assistant professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Mandi
