Reviving Higher Education: Bring Back the Teacher
It is worth noting that the University system in India has hardly changed since it since colonial days. We should have the courage to identify the implanted deficiencies in the presented system of higher education and to revive and contemporise the concepts that once worked in the indigenous system to produce great excellence.
Most of us forget that for almost a millennium India maintained a system of higher education which was availed of by many neighbouring civilizations, including China. This traditional system, of guru and gurukul , centered entirely on the teacher and his direct relationship with the disciples. It was rigorous and demanding and yet flexible. It used emotional ties to create long term obligations and accountability. Inspite of its hierarchy, it had an admiration for the invididual excellence (pratibha) which sometimes elevated very young persons to be elevated as acharyas, a phenomenon which seems to have disappeared in modern India. Above all, it looked upon paedagogy not as an instrument of knowledge but as a catalyst. Epistemologically, it considered teaching as "awakening" and not as "transference" of knowledge based merely on "course-work". The student was regarded not a clean slate, but a seed nurtured by the psychic ability of the teacher who was a daily decision maker in his realm. Despite the obligatory support by the state and community monitoring of teaching instiutions was distant and indirect. In brief, the teacher was trusted.
Western paedagogy ushered two major changes. It not only brought in print technology to replace the oral Indian method, and it also removed the teacher from the center and brought in the academic administrator. The European system derived from the paradigm of the Christian seminary where the emphasis was on the learning through regimen. The ecclesiastic head here was more of an administrator and less of an intermediary between the novice and knowledge. From this example, the European University system came to focus on course work which was taught and tutored, but never considered to be "revealed" by the teacher. The final degree was given by a collective body. In short, the personal bond between the student and the teacher, the psychic nurturing, which existed in the Indian or even in the Greek tradition, did not obtain in Europe.
The British tinkered with the idea of "Oriental education" before enforcing their own system. Apart from its educational content, methodology and technology, "Oriental education" would have been unacceptable to the British as it would have retained the primacy of the indigenous teacher, the traditional notion of the acharya who was beyond their ken. So instead of introducing new learning into the indigenous set up, they preferred to promote institutions in which the teacher was made a cog in the wheel revolved by the principal, the academic administrator, either very much under the influence of the state or directly appointed by it. This was unthinkable in traditional India, even in the period of Islamic governments when the state never appointed the teachers but only supported them through charity.
During the struggle for independence, many institutions were founded and supported by non-governmental trusts that worked with exemplary zeal for the promotion of nationalism and indigenous ideas. But in post-British India, public keenness to invest in education eroded overnight as it was presumed that the new state shall be able to shape a fresh system more responsive to the national needs. This proved to be a tragic error. The state while it took upon itself totally to bear the burden of education did little more than preserve the colonial set up aimed at producing graduates to fill the ranks of new bureaucracy. The earlier issue of colonial vesus colonised was craftily replaced by majority versus minority rights in education. As a consequence, even those Christian and Muslim institutes of higher education that had earlier nurtued their students with anti-colonial feelings now shed their modernising agenda and under the control of bishops and imams worked to make their reputation as preparatory schools for the IAS and upper division clerks.
The new political echelons and the bureaucracy magnified the stranglehold of the socialist state over higher education to unthinkable proportions. From appointments of Vice-Chancellors to those of peons and garderners, let alone the appointments and promotions of teachers, setting admission policies and student fees, the fuctioning of the uiversities fell exclusively into the hands of political lobbies. There was no possibilty of the intelligensia asserting themselves, as political infiltration of the teacher and student ranks became the order of the day with the unions acting as ever anxious brokers.
This was a grevious betrayal of the rebellion voiced against colonial education during the freedom struggle. The new bureaucracy, with a Euro- derivative mindset, eschewed all indigenous models of Gandhi, Vinoba, Aurobindo or Tagore and invited the American second raters to devise jargons as opiates to our academia because indigenous models while opening all doors for modernity of curricula, affirmed the centrality of the teacher-figure, an anathema to our neta-sahab duo.
The first step towards freeing higher education is to establish that the State is obliged to support but not to define education. Neither legislators nor administrators are trained to select and appoint educators or to prescribe the content of education. Let us not forget, that this was not so in this country even in the days of monarchy. The powers of mass persuation and indoctrination, once the domain of the priestly class, are being used in the name of democracy by the legislature. The intellectual class must now free value and opinion making institutions from the clutches of legislators. The philosopher must check the king.
Hence, major amendments are needed in Acts of all universities to prevent the installation of army generals and IAS officers as Vice-Chancellors by PMs and CMs. The consultation and concurrence of the apex bodies of the Universities should be unavaoidable under law before the approval by the Chancellor, President of India or Chief Ministers of the States. The Chancellors should have the power to interfere only in genuine emergencies. Like the judiciary, teacher appointments at all levels should be done by teachers bodies augmented by proven artists and scientists.
A national opinion must be created to persuade all political parties to wind up their now openly maintained wings in student and teacher unions. The senates and academic councils of university should have fewer legislators as representaives and more of teachers. In the last decade it has become crystal clear that unions are split along political lines and do more squabbling than good. The teachers must also give up their allergy to business representatives in councils and invite donations from the industry. The teacher-turned- administrator basking under political patronage must go for good.
The nation must again repose its faith in the teacher. This may sound like asking for the moon. But if after half a century it can be realised that state control has stifled national economy, that supremacy of the legislators in appointing judges can endanger the freedom of the judiciary, surely there can be rethinking on the role of the teacher who deserves the freedom to be what he is, a maker of minds.
Indian Express, Edit Page , 6-8-97