It is never wise to reject a system without reasons. We
had arguments against the semester system to arrive at a unanimous
decision of opposing the same. We had reasoned out the absurdities in
the FYUP. Our stands in these cases were never blind and were always
based on their detailed analysis. We therefore, must spare ourselves
from becoming slaves of our final decisions. Our opposition for FYUP
or the CBCS were not because of their nomenclature but because of the
objectives behind them. Now, an effort is being made to pull us all
into the trap of opposing every change in the name of our
well-meaning decisions of opposing these formulations. It often
reminds me of the laughable stand of the university wherein they have
resorted to notify all kinds of teachers' strikes as illegal not
because of the issues at hand but by citing a court order that is
arguably quoted completely 'out of context'. Let us remind ourselves
that even our existing migration schemes are nothing but our own
method of transferring credits from one college to the other. We were
also never opposed to another credit transfer scheme wherein we were
absolutely comfortable in transferring our Honours students to the
respective program courses when they used to get less than a
threshold marks. Whereas the DTF has a history of taking an
ideological stand irrespective of the stand of DUTA, recently the DU
authorities helped them in creating a space and environment wherein
all of us were pushed to appear on their side. What helped them was
the idiocy with which FYUP was formulated and implemented as these
did not confine to the format alone but spilled over even to the
contents and the syllabus. Whereas we all can feel the relevance and
usefulness of even the foundation courses that have been designed in other institutes such as IISc (Bangalore),
in DU they were reduced to jokes because of their compulsory nature,
the unreasonable weightage attached with these courses, the standard
of the contents and above all the state of unpreparedness with which
these were launched. The DU authorities were further exposed
defenceless as all these experiments were being carried out in an
isolated manner ONLY in this university – thereby defeating the
very purpose for which it was championing. The fact that these
changes were being implemented without affecting the desired changes
in the approach of school-teaching further established beyond doubts
that the experiments were badly designed, were ill-thought and
hurriedly approached.
Even if we decide to leave all the above arguments
aside, does it not make sense in having broad centralized
guideline to help different universities to come some kind of an even-level
wherein assessment of students from different universities would not
remain as difficult as it is now. Just as we have a CBSE syllabus to
guide all other boards to keep up with the pace, relevance and some sense
of uniformity, is it not time to discuss the same in the area of higher
education too? Just as we all were unanimous in opposing the
experiments that were carried out in our university it is also a fact
that we all are not happy with state of education in this country.
Let us not run away from discussions as there is no
other known way to arrive at a consensus. CBCS or a modified FYUP –
what would ensure a better performance of any new system of education
is our involvement and preparedness that will eventually help us in
developing the necessary confidence and conviction – to make any new system deliver.
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