Back in school, we were taught the fable of the workaholic demon who would consume its master if he was not constantly kept engaged at work. Eventually, he was given a task he could not complete – straighten the tail of a dog! If there was a moral (can’t remember if there was!) it may be that, some tasks are impossible because what you are trying to do will be undone. Time after time, until the very act of doing becomes a farce, an elaborate ritual that promises, only to deceive.
Back in 2018, we were made one such set of promises. We were told that our existing system of education – the annual system with its outdated syllabi and outmoded systems of examination, was passe. We needed something new, something that would prepare students for the future in a global digital world. We were told that examinations would take place twice a year, that there would be marks for internals, tutorials and even attendance. But most importantly, we were given the promise of a brand-new syllabus that would actually let the students think again.
Of course, this attempt to straighten the proverbial tail was undertaken only when the dog’s financier (UGC) went after the caretakers of the dog with a big birch. After a year of futile resistance, the caretakers yielded in 2018. We had our CBCS syllabus.
UGC did not want to leave the task of establishing the CBCS system entirely to the Universities. These successors of the medieval centers of mediocrity and thought regimentation were known to pour their old wine into new bottles regardless of shape, size, or capacity of the bottle concerned. So we also got a draft syllabus, and boy was it a wonder!
For the first time in about a decade (probably more), new papers were introduced. We were told that instead of the same-old history of Britain, Europe and India (with a smattering of modern Far East), we were to learn the histories of Africa, South America, North America and even journalism! Imagine our wonderment at the thought of actually learning something in order to teach it.
Of course, the caretakers of the dog did not try hard enough to straighten the tail. Perhaps they guessed that it was impossible. Hence, the more “exotic” histories were jettisoned in favour of drawing onboard the flotsam of Bengal, China and Japan. Papers that had been taught for a decade or more were touched up with topics that UGC had suggested. Touched up is a generous term, as in most cases, it was no more than an addition of a phrase here, a term there, etc. etc. The dog wasn’t going to change its stripes was it now ?
That said though, it was still novel enough. We got the history of medieval Europe (back), along with medieval Arabia and the Near East. America became an option, albeit in direct competition with the beaten-to-death paper on Bengal. If China and Japan returned with a vengeance, they were accompanied by Nelson Mandela, Betty Friedan and Khwame Nkrumah.
Best of all, students could actually be made to think if tutorials were administered properly. With 15 marks on the line, a college insisting on originality in the tutorial was likely to be rewarded with at least some scholarly effort.
Of course, the tail had only partially been straightened, and that too, by temporary devices built on flimsy grounds. CBCS aimed at giving colleges greater autonomy, and colleges loved the UGC for it. Autonomy in plain-speak means the ability to get away with as much as possible while doing as little as possible. As little studying, as little teaching, as little “thinking out of the box.” Same old is comfortable and convenient. Just ask your cat.
Attendance was the first casualty of this autonomous approach to dismantling the innovations of UGC’s road to hell, paved with good intentions of course! Colleges buckled with a rather supine willingness to student pressure on attendance. College after college simply awarded the 10 marks allotted for attendance without so much as a whimper of protest. Those that did protest had their attendance registers cooked the way ballots are cooked during local elections.
But we said, never thee mind! We too did few classes and turned out to be first class scholars. Maybe if the teaching is done right, the students who actually want to learn (as opposed to the degree-hoarders) will learn something. But alas, that was not to be. Colleges whittled down the “choice” in CBCS to the point where only the most common options, tution-centre certified of course, were offered. Anyone wishing to go in for a different option was left to fend for herself, to the point where choosing the America paper over Bengal was akin to academic harakiri.
It did not help that the University, seeing the UGC satisfied with the outward trappings of CBCS, promptly sought to loosen the bonds that held the tail in place. Old questions, repeated year over year until tuition teachers could recite them from memory like shlokas, were brought back. In the name of ensuring that students acclimatized themselves to the new system, the difficulty level of the questions was diluted until you were left with just the tasteless broth of what used to be thought-provoking papers. The food for thought inherent in “would you argue” was replaced by the bland flavorless fare of “discuss in brief.”
To add insult to the multiple wounds inflicted upon the ideals of the CBCS system, textbooks appeared like mushrooms on a decaying corpse. Where earlier writers would write textbooks with the goal of explaining complex topics in simple terms, CBCS specialists wrote textbooks to reduce simple topics to school-level essays that told you just enough to fill out three pages for long answers. When the august authors could not find enough matter for these three long pages, they took ample help from dear ol’ Google, resulting in voodoo becoming part of the topic of magic in medieval Europe!
The third knife in poor CBCS’ torso was the decimation of the tutorial system. Thought provoking tutorial required the teachers to think. If respected college professors were required to think every time they set tutorials, they would be working above their pay grade (which is, by the way, the highest government grade in India). In the spirit of true mediocrity, they thought of the simplest way to get through with the annoyance called tutorial, and stuck to it with a vengeance. Entire batches of students turned out the same topic for their tutorials, which were promptly marked the same, producing the fascinating spectacle of award lists filled top-to-bottom with the same marks. The tail was almost free of its dire straightening bonds.
By the time the pandemic rolled in, everyone was relieved. No longer would the farce of going through rigorous paper-setting, exam-conducting, script-evaluating and marks-uploading have to be gone through. Sure, they would have to be gone through on pen and paper. But when students sat in the lap of verdant nature (and/or their lovers) to fill out answer scripts from pre-formatted WhatsApp forwards, you knew the tail was back to being its ol’ curly self. Did it wag right ? Hell yes! It wagged better than it ever had. Everyone was happy, UGC be damned.
But not all good things last, so they have to be made to last longer than they should. Covid-19 lost the battle against humanity, and threatened to upend the springy tail of WhatsApp-forwarded examinations as it departed. A desperate rear-guard action began to save this cherished examination system. Movements were launched, verbose facebook posts made, media attention sought. The setting sun of “online examinations” was thus made to provide false illumination to the marksheets of CU examinees for another whole year. Then it finally set, and the students went into mourning.
But they were not the only ones who mourned. Teachers found that their pay had to be earned once more. Classes had to be taken on time, papers set and checked in person, and with all this, the spectre of accountability appeared once more. But this spectre was no longer the original ghoul of CBCS. It was a mere shadow, as the UGC itself had moved on from CBCS to grander stuff. Attendance as a metric of students actually attending class was forgotten once and for all. Tutorials as a means of making students do their own study was buried six feet deep with fervent prayers that it may never raise its zombie self again. Internals became a formality. CBCS and its fell host had finally been tamed. The tail remained proudly curled!
But as I said, UGC had moved onto grander things. Nay, the whole country had. This was the national education policy, which sought to give students even more options, including that of moving out at any point in the course of one’s graduation and taking commensurate credits and degrees. Choices were meant to abound, and students were meant to learn a host of skills that would stand them well in the evolving marketplace. Research was made part of the UG curriculum. There would be no attendance, but tutorials were expanded to become a full quarter of the marks in a paper.
Oh, the promises once more! The jaded ranks of CU teachers had seen its predecessor off with much difficulty and braced for another battle to ensure the perennial liberty of the proverbial tail. This time, the government placed itself in the front ranks of the resistance, and then left the battlefield.
Finding themselves suddenly without this important ally, the universities swore not to repeat the mistakes of CBCS. There would be no fancy papers, no original thinking requirements. UGC may have suggested further changes through an LOCF-syllabus, but who cares? We have autonomy right? The tail shall wag!
In fact, why bother with any of the trappings of NEP at all? Why not simply copy and paste the existing CBCS syllabus until we have ticked every box NEP has? Why not forget that a degree has an internal logic, that learning proceeds through logical and chronological development? Why bother with adding anything or removing anything when we already have a syllabus and students are already studying it? Last and most importantly, why upset the tuition centres’ apple cart again? A man has got to eat!
Why bother? Copy and paste, then rinse and repeat the copy and paste until you have a syllabus for every paper required under NEP/CCF/whatever the f they’re calling the system now. If you can’t find a paper that corresponds to one required in the new syllabus, just chop, fry, and serve up the existing papers until you have more of the same ol’, but with rashers this time!
IDC ? What the f is that? Just copy paste part of the old Paper III of the General course. MDC ? Copy paste whatever is given in the Major papers ? Major papers? Copy paste whatever was given in the old core course papers. VAC? Is that short for vacuum? Because the syllabus sure leaves a huge vacuum in the part where UGC envisaged historical awareness would fit in.
Copy and paste until the formatting goes to the dogs and the reference list (not updated for the better part of two decades) becomes unreadable because the Bengali-typing software has been updated in the meantime and the old fonts no longer work as intended. If only technology lent itself to such stagnation!
But dammit! The old syllabus was for three years and the new one involved four. What was to be done with an entire two extra semesters? Copy what and paste what? There was nothing that could be done without putting grey matter to use, and that was not acceptable at a time when so much ATP had been spent hitting Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V repeatedly. Just so the syllabus did not look incomplete, a bunch of random paper names were added. The syllabus? Oh the dog’s tail will grow a few hairs over the years. Best not to make it too bushy for now.
And there you have it! the magnum opus authored by Dr. Why Bother At All, Dr. Grey Matter Wanted and Dr. Is This Lip Service to UGC Enough. It may be technically incomplete, structurally a mess, and contain pages upon pages of unreadable blocks where Bengali references used to be, but it will still get the work done.
Last time, the tail was bound to the straight and narrow and then gradually loosened. This time, the attempt itself has been doomed futile, beyond a few nods to UGC here and there. Why bother with learning at all?