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.
