Imagine a railway junction half a century ago. Steam engines were deployed for local jobs, such as pulling a set of bogies from one train and joining them with another. Up and down the platform they went, blowing their loud whistle and releasing clouds of steam. Their gigantic wheels would struggle and start moving in one direction, then in the opposite direction. This scene appears to capture the present condition of higher education. It has been the site of numerous reforms over the last two decades. Some of these appear to have become stable, but systemic discomfort is still there. A prime example is the semester system. Generations of planners have recommended it as the best solution to our lethargic annual calendar. Those of us who have experienced the semester system in a Western university were impressed by its logical curricular flow. But then, syllabus-making in our country is seldom well thought out. Like those present at a havan, all concerned toss in their favourite topics. The students’ burden is nobody’s concern. Haste is also a constant factor. I remember a senior university official advising a group of hesitant teachers, “Take a pair of scissors and chop the present syllabus into two — that’s all.” Approval for the patchwork was granted with dispatch. The main objective was to shift to a new calendar. Critical voices were seen as anti-reform.
Students sitting in a single room at Government Primary Smart School, Kundanpuri (Manish/Hindustan Times)
The semesterised calendar is now so well established that it may sound pointless, even heretical, to question its efficacy. There are no studies to show whether the break up of the old annual calendar has enhanced learning. Ask a student, and the usual answer you get is that there isn’t enough time to go deep into anything. The number of official holidays is a special feature that sets the Indian semester system far apart from its counterpart in Western universities. Apart from the frequency of holidays, the continuation of the old exam system has proved a major anomaly. In the West, the teacher offering a course is responsible for evaluating student performance. Historically, teachers in India were distrusted in assessing their own students impartially. The annual exam ensured the confidentiality of the paper and the evaluator. It was a delicate and cumbersome system to manage. Accomplishing it once a year — without paper leaks — was challenging enough for the exam branch; doing it for two semesters has proved very difficult indeed. Compromises have been made in all aspects, and a sense of hurry to cover the syllabus is palpable.
Evidently, the semester idea is a transplant. Like many other transplants, it demanded careful adjustment to the climate and soil of its new habitat. This necessary requirement could not be fulfilled because a key player — the teacher — was neither convinced nor involved. We can see this today in the case of a bigger reform in Kerala. Following central universities, Kerala has introduced a new four-year, semesterised undergraduate course with a dispersed syllabus. Several teachers have expressed serious doubts about the conditions under which such a major change in the system is being pushed through. Once again, we see a phenomenon that many universities have witnessed earlier. Instead of teachers being taken on board, they are being marginalised. Ideally, teachers should be at the forefront of any educational reform, but that rarely happens in our country. This may be one major reason why reforms prove, quite often, detrimental to standards. In Kerala’s neighbouring state of Karnataka, the four-year course was introduced earlier and is now being withdrawn after a review.
Within half a century, university teachers have lost their say in shaping policies in higher education. The magic bullet of semester-wise break up of the curriculum is now being considered for secondary education. Once again, we don’t know how teachers might feel about it. In a rare professional autobiography, professor MA Khader has narrated his trajectory as a teacher. He conveys serious doubts about the system’s capacity today to attract the young towards teaching and enjoying it. Who can contradict him? Teacher eligibility tests attempt to select the best, but cynicism among the recruited sets in early.
As a backlog of reforms builds up, even minor changes face greater inertia. In the ethos prevailing today, it is difficult to persuade anyone in authority that teachers are the crucial factor for the success of educational reforms. They alone can bring classroom realities into policy discussions. When they oppose something, they need to be heard, not forced to accept a change. Despite the bureaucratic character that our universities and colleges acquired during the colonial period, teachers have struggled to humanise the system and make knowledge meaningful to the young.
The higher education system is in a fragile state today. Many of its strengths and attainments have been frittered away. The crisis of quality is pervasive, and the decline of standards is hard to hide under the rhetoric of innovations. A wide chasm has grown between teachers and those who run institutions. In a vast number of colleges and departments, crucial decisions are not in the hands of teachers, nor is sufficient time and deliberative space allotted to such decisions. The result is predictable: Ill-considered reforms pile up, and the hope of improvement fades.
Krishna Kumar is a former director of NCERT and the author of ‘Smaller Citizens’. The views expressed are personal
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