Education in Bengal on the guillotine

Updated on: Thursday, January 12, 2012

Education scenario in West Bengal is in the news for all the wrong reasons. There was a time when Bengal produced some great names in science, arts and technical fields. The academic atmosphere in Bengal was conducive for intellectual pursuit, scientific quest and original ideas. Unfortunately, this is fast vanishing in the twilight and we are left with stories of migrating talents, political interference, mediocrity regimes, falling standards, dilapidated laboratories and classrooms as well as financial crunch in the education sector. Bengal has gone down in rank among all states in India in terms of the overall literacy rate, gross enrolment ratio, drop-out rates etc.

The recent events of recurrence of students confrontation in colleges and universities, often quite disrespectful to even teachers, add insult to injuries. Overall, education in Bengal is suffocating for lack of fresh thinking how to rejuvenate the sagging morale and spirit of the teaching community, students and their worried parents.

The centre-point of the recent discussion and debate has veered around the time point from when such a slide had started. Although this is relevant for locating some of the proximate causes for such downslide, one should not be subsumed by the nitty gritty of the archival aspect of this. The essence of the wrongdoing in the recent past may be summed up in two words- loss of transparency in education policies and devaluation of independence in academic world.

In the past three decades, the whole process of bagging an academic job and getting promotion through the standard ladder got entangled in procedural deficiencies. Although college and school service commissions were created ostensibly to bridge the 'trust deficit', the selection of experts and the subjective basis of selection of candidates raised more questions than solutions. The selection of experts in the selection committees in different subjects rarely depends on the opinion of well known personalities in the subject. Similarly, it is difficult to understand why the selecting bodies did not evolve a points system on interview where the experts independently give points on the basis of an agreed set of criteria and the chairman finally gives the verdict on the basis of ranks obtained by aggregation of such independent marking. Similarly, it is hard to find any standard criteria to determine placement and transfer of teachers within the school or college system. Such lack of transparency from the very beginning of the academic life of a potential teacher kills his independence status. In many cases talent takes a backseat and seeking patronage from those who matter became the primary goal of a 'would be' teacher.

This vitiates the system from the very beginning. Somewhere, the quality of teaching and education were badly hit. Teachers, whose main devotion should be continuous improvement of quality and quantity of subjects taught, may not be the ones commonly seen in college corridors of today's Bengal. Otherwise, why does not one hear visible action by teachers to improve teaching qualities either in terms of upgrading recognizable research output and teaching environment or reduction of teachers' absenteeism in class or phenomenal but unhealthy rise in private tuition? Similarly, why should teachers resist introduction of a feasible students' feedback system since the students are the major beneficiaries of the system?

The attitude and respect of students towards their teachers as well as education follow from the devotion which the teachers show within and outside the classrooms. As mentioned, one has reason to suspect the degree of such devotion to teaching of the present teaching community. But this does not anyway justify what is happening in recent periods, where students are not only confronting each other over filing of election papers but directly heckling the teachers-in-charge. Does it show an extreme form of disrespect and hatred toward the teachers because they did not take such care of the students as they should have? This is certainly one part of the story. The other part goes to the rather dangerous practice we have allowed whereby the students wing of political parties directly take part in the election. If one looks at other constituents of a college or university namely teachers and non-teaching staff, none of them directly participates in election as members of a political party in their respective constituencies. They may well be members of political parties, but they have to preach as ordinary members of the body which represents their constituency like teachers association or employees association. Such indirect canvassing certainly is less lethal in terms of spreading animosity among people of different ideologies.

Finally, it is easy said than done that political parties must encourage students more towards academic matters rather than general political issues. We have seen excellent politicians coming out of Bengal who left their imprint in academic performance also. The present political parties in Bengal must realize that human capital is formed only in educational sector and not in political arena. The future development of Bengal (and India) depends largely on the quality and quantity of such human capital. They must consciously try to disengage students from anything which prevents such human capital formation. Some tauntingly quotes story of Kalidasa while finding faults in the rival, but let us not turn whole of Bengal into a that story so that we pull the state down to the feet of all others.

(The author is Professor and Coordinator, Centre for Advanced Studies, Department of Economics, Jadavpur University)

Times of India

Education in Bengal on the guillotine

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