The chat room: Can we please make all rules by consensus, not by imposition'

Teachers are in the news a lot these days, mostly for the wrong reasons, even if they are not to blame for it all. It’s perhaps time we all began to have a conversation with teachers, who are so crucial to the future of young people yet are such a neglected group. That’s what Darshana Ramdev did, chatting up St. Joseph’s College Reader Arul Mani.

“You can come to class without a dress also. That is how your character is – I’m going to ignore you.” An angry outburst by a professor at the National Law School of India University to a student who came to class in shorts resulted in around 80 students doing the same thing in protest. Dress codes are the norm in city colleges and are brought about claiming to establish a decorum on campus. Still, as Arul Mani, Reader at the Department of English in St. Joseph's College of Arts and Science pointed out, "rules should emerge as the result of dialogue. If they don't, they can become somewhat oppressive."

Colleges in Bengaluru require a degree of compliance, Mani remarked. "As long as that happens out of a genuine conversation and the students, who are young adults, see the logic behind what is being laid down, things will be okay." It will take a lot less energy to keep these rules in place as well, he added. "If they are mutually agreed upon, they will sustain themselves."

The larger debate, said Mani, is that dress codes tend to prescribe the concepts of masculinity and femininity. "It could have been handled better in NLS. Yes, the lady was dressed in half-terms, but things could have played out differently. Compliance is necessary, but it doesn't need to be imposed in a vicious manner. A law school can make a claim that they want to acquaint students with the decorum of the profession, although that too, like I said, should emerge from a discussion."

Is the student-teacher dynamic changing, then? Are strict hierarchies slowly giving way to more equal relationships? "I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Mani replied. "In colleges, you're dealing with young adults who need to know why they're being asked to do something. In fact, I think colleges are becoming more like schools. In Bengaluru, institutions that offer eleventh and twelfth grade education ask students to wear uniforms. There is an accepting growth of the school as the norm for classroom behaviour. There is also a greater degree of surveillance, what with CCTVs becoming a regular feature in most institutions."

Having said that, however, it must be taken into account that schools are changing their approach and becoming more open to dialogue between students and teachers. "Schools are smaller these days and are becoming more democratic about their processes, which is a healthy change."

IT czar Narayan Murthy brought the question of student-teacher dynamics exploding onto the forefront of discussion by saying teachers should be paid based on performance. He was also of the opinion that students should have a say in the performance valuation of the teacher. "I'm very glad the education system is not run by Narayan Murthy," Mani said at once, laughing. "Some sort of performance-based norm is not always a bad thing, but we need more debate on what the rules of performance are - there is a lot of diversity in education. Science, Arts and Commerce sections have very different benchmarks of performance. This cannot be made universal."

Students assessing their teachers could shed light on what needs to be addressed, Mani added. Still, there are nuances both to being a student and a teacher - the two don't always see eye-to-eye. "The problem begins when everything is hinged on this approval."

Having said all this, where do teachers stand at the moment, both in terms of their compensation and their status in society? "The work teachers do is not taken very seriously," Mani said. "They are, very often, an underpaid section in society. It has changed a bit at the college level, but the increased pay scales only apply to teachers who belong in the UGC cadre." This leaves teachers in managerial jobs and private institutions at the mercy of those who employ them. "It simply means you have a lot of overworked, underpaid people in the profession," he said. With the government pulling out of higher education in a big way, it is the mindset that needs to change. "If you want quality education," said Mani, "you need people coming in rather than going out. The state must invest deeply in education."

Campus politics have been the centre of heated debate over the last couple of months, ever since the furor at JNU in Delhi. Mohandas Pai has been a most active proponent of colleges discouraging active politics, saying that taxpayers don't need to subsidise this. "It's an unprofessional argument without any real merit," said Mani. "it operates within a very narrow opinion of what learning is all about. The taxpayer is subsidising a space where students have the room to question, where new ideas are born and new ways of dealing with things can emerge."

Government-run institutions act as an equaliser in one sense, he argued. They cater to students from economically challenged backgrounds, who should be allowed to express themselves. "There is a gap between aspirations and what the student actually gets in terms of education. The only way to deal with this is through a degree of dissent and through debate, of course." Still, he concluded, it all boils down to intent. "The pursuit of justice needs to be articulated, but at the same time, campuses shouldn't be reduced to recruiting grounds for political parties trying to increase their cadres. The essence of the thing, really, is balance."
Arul Mani is a Reader/Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, St. Joseph's College