A Teacher Writes -
Meenakshi Thampan
Intellectual inquiry, integrity and the scientific pursuit of knowledge are the bedrock of academic excellence in any institution of higher learning. The basis on which these qualities are nurtured is commitment and passion on the part of teachers and students as well as a commitment to high academic standards on the part of the university. As a teacher in the university for several years, I have come across vastly different styles of functioning where we often compromise academic excellence in meeting another important goal, that of maintaining good relations with students and complying with what we consider "being fair" and "just" with students. How does this happen and how do we allow this to happen when we all claim to be committed to the twin goals of teaching and learning in every sense of the terms?
I, like many others, am a teacher not because it was the last resort of a tired or unoccupied mind but because I deeply cherish my role as a teacher in the intellectual life of a student. I also value the mentoring aspect of my role that is concerned with other aspects of the student's development and my engagement with students in these aspects is essential to my relationship with them. I therefore see myself as a teacher who is not merely teaching sociology but also, sharing with students, the seriousness and ardour of reading a text, debating ideas and questions, excited by the insights and ideas that emerge through discussion, posing questions and always doubting, seeking, struggling, never to be satisfied with easy answers but to identify the complexity and multi-layered texture of the problem, trying to find answers that often give rise to new questions, and in this manner, trying to sharpen the intellect, theirs and mine, together, in the task of learning, and growing, together. And this is how we strive to institutionalise academic excellence as a goal and a value in the everyday life of the university. So whether we are engaged in teaching, in a seminar, a debate, in viewing a film, the pursuit of academic excellence is not lost. It is this that gives the university its life, its breath, its soul.
Teacher-Student Relations
Traditionally, it is undoubtedly the case that there has been a hierarchy in relations between university teachers and their students where teachers are often viewed as having indisputable authority over not just the subject and the discipline but also over students who submit to teachers in their pursuit of a degree, a project, a fellowship, a recommendation or simply, in order to pass the examination, as teachers control internal assessment marks which are added to the final examination marks. In one sense or another, teachers therefore are in authority and undoubtedly students are at the receiving end in more ways than one. The culture of teacher supremacy and student subservience is unfortunately a part of the everyday life of a university. Many of us recognise this aspect of university life as well as the practical problems that students face in dealing with the large bureaucracy that is also an inevitable part of university life. Our commitment as teachers compels us to address these aspects as well. As individuals there are ways through which we seek to have different kinds of relationships with our students wherein we may also help them resolve many of these issues. There are however many aspects of student life, and the problems that beset them, that tend to remain outside our frame of reference and therefore never addressed. This is unfair to students to the extent that we therefore never really fulfil our roles as mentors and remain only part-teachers, satisfying the one dimension of our role which we think suffices the pursuit of academic excellence. Perhaps we are therefore limited as teachers, unable to satisfy all that students expect of us, constrained by other pursuits such as research and the dilemmas of personal careers and departmental politics.
If this is how it is, how do we seek to begin to redress our shortcomings? It would be essential, to my mind, to push for greater student participation, enabling more voice and agency, more equality, less authoritarianism, and learning partnerships, never forgetting the goal of academic excellence. This is a hard task which we must set ourselves and, as teachers, each one of us needs to consider whether we fulfil our roles as passionate and committed teachers. The sense of guilt towards students, perhaps experienced by many of us, however pushes us in other directions. It appears to be more gratifying to make things easier for students by cajoling them, helping them along, pushing them through, giving them a "chance", wooing their acceptance and support in many different ways. By giving in to the rhetoric of student welfare, we often push ourselves to cut at the roots of academic excellence. This emboldens the emergence of mediocrity where it never existed or enhances it in institutional spaces that work hard to maintain excellence.
A dilution of academic programmes is the beginning of the institutionalisation of mediocrity and we can succumb to it without even knowing we are engaged in the process of doing so. We may therefore imagine we are engaged in the pursuit of academic excellence, as we have clear objectives of academic success and recognition, when in fact we are ourselves allowing the space for the emergence and institutionalisation of mediocrity. This is a "misrecognition" of the symbolic violence which we will most certainly inflict on our students whom we may think we are helping when in fact we are indicating to them the ease with which we can make allowances for them to protect their "interests". This too is a modality for the exercise of power. In showing our largesse in "helping" students, "protecting" them, perhaps in this manner we are seeking their dependence and compliance. Ultimately we prove failures in becoming real partners in the journey of learning that is after all about high standards and hard work, about mutual respect and care-giving, in a deeply enriching and vibrant intellectual environment.
