Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Biometric humiliation - Axe of accountability



Yes, I will feel humiliated if asked to register my attendance on a biometric machine. It would make me feel like a criminal whose intentions of breaking rules are already established. It would feel like I am sentenced to a punishment for a crime that I have never committed. I will feel robbed off all my enthusiasm in going that extra mile to deliver to my students. I will be left with no eternal drive to help students in shaping their future after my ‘working hours’. It will dampen my spirit of treating the college administration as my own responsibility. Only execution and not success will be the aim for any assignment that I will then take up. As a consequence, I will be shaved off all motivations to own my institution. And yes, I will fail to inspire my students.

The Purpose
It hurts me more when I read my Vice-Chancellor admitting in a press statement that “Biometric system alone can’t make absentee teachers hold classes regularly. But that is no reason for not introducing it” (Mail Today September 29, 2012). To me, then the only motivation left for him in favour of implementing this system is to humiliate teachers like me and nothing else. Isn’t this then only to prove that teachers are mere slave in this education (University) system and I, including many others, am not entitled to possess my own views? Don’t we all know that those who bunk classes are either not competent enough to hold classes or have other ‘better things’ to do? Busy in avoiding their incapability getting exposed, these teachers never question the questionable and thus become favourites of authorities. These teachers care little for the University System or the very purpose of its existence and instead allow the authorities to use them to feed their ego. These teachers who are ever ready to put the entire education system at stake are those who constitute the core group of stakeholders whom the University authorities recognise these days. These people are often picked up to constitute a convenient group of policy makers in our University system. The University is well aware of the fact that it will achieve little by forcing these few individuals to take classes. I am convinced that aim of the University is not to force these bunking teachers to engage their classes but is actually meant to humiliate conscientious teachers who have mind of their own and often become hurdle and refuse to blindly follow the directions of the authorities. The University this time again has resolved to teach these ‘thinking’ teachers some hard lessons.
Earlier I had felt the same when teachers’ views were not given due importance while implementing semester system. Now I am convinced that even then the authorities were well aware of the negative consequences of the implementation of the system but went ahead with their designs only to show the exact place that is recently being created for the teachers in some ignorable corner of the University system.  As suspected by the teachers, having failed to deliver in the semester system the University is now passing on all the additional burden of the system on to the College administration besides shirking from taking the responsibility of their conventional work related to examinations that they were doing from ages. They just want to govern without accountability. All the dirty work created due to their ill conceived vision or due to their going overboard in pleasing their masters in the HRD ministry is now conveniently being forced upon to the undergraduate administration. Even the axe of showing accountability seems to be falling only on this side of the University.

Accountability
However now I wish not to provide any chance to anybody to project me as shirkers. More importantly I will now make conscious effort in not allowing any space behind me to create a hide-out for any shirker. I am open to evaluation by my own students. Instead of scaling me on mere punctuality let them assess my sincerity while I make serious efforts to complete the syllabus. Let them evaluate me on how successfully I communicated with them, on the thrust and depth that I provided to make them understand the content and how often, in their view, I had come prepared for a lecture. I will also like to allow them to give us suggestions for improvement. Of course, to reach to any meaningful conclusion only those, who attended at least 80 percent of the lecture that I delivered for them, should qualify to give their assessment. Let us make this evaluation compulsory for this set of selected students. Let me also suggest in favour of establishing a similar feedback system to receive valuable opinion of the passed out students on some recent experiments being done regularly by University authorities supposedly in the benefit of students at the cost of humiliating teachers.
I hope that I am in overwhelming majority in this Delhi University. Let us demand to be treated as teachers. But they will give me their ears only if they desire to prove me wrong.

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