Opioid crisis in engineering education

 ‘I pay the schoolmaster, but ‘tis the school boys that educate my son’ – Emerson

I do not know whether it is Ralph Waldo Emerson who said this or some other Emerson! But, I don’t care. Someone said it and it struck a chord with me. Now, to something else someone else said that got me to the cusp of responding severely in the negative and fortunately did not: “I like teaching but I don’t like the students”.

I have been a teacher, in the formal sense, for not more than 5 years (discounting all the other ways in which I was carrying out the responsibilities of a teacher) and I have never come to hate my students nor can I ever do so. Note the word, “hate”.

I will not take the help of any dictionary, but will define the word in the sense I am using it – I would never wish that I had never interacted with the student, I had palmed off that student to another teacher, would never bear any ill-will towards that student … If I am shouting at student, it is because I am angry at myself for not getting through to that student; my fault and not his/her. Bad aim!

I treat my students as my paymaster at one remove, indeed, that is what Emerson said per the opening quote.

If you are teaching, or put it in more commercial terms, in the business of teaching, you have no choice in the students that you would come across. Let me take IITs-any one of the nearly a score of these spread across India-and make my case.

It is in the interest of the institution to involve itself in self-aggrandizement. Exclusivity is the name of the game. Having benefitted from the education I got in two different IITs, I am turning into a turncoat. No sense of gratitude, you may say. Not true. Indeed, it is the opposite. I owe these institutions to develop themselves into what their motives proclaim. I am speaking truth to power, at the lowest level and not very loudly.

The reputation of IITs depends not on the quality of their output but on the supposed quality of the input, through JEE. That is where the problem starts.

Paraphrasing what a high level official from one of the older IITs (there is this stratification – older and the Johnny-come lately among the IITs themselves!) said: time has come to discard the JEE model of “recruiting” students to IITs.

Why did I put “recruiting” within quotes? The JEE, as conducted now with two-level filters, does nothing but filtering in students (read “recruiting”) who can solve problems-more conceptual the problems maybe-but merely problems nonetheless. The tests do not help in assessing the nature of knowledge-seeking in the applicants. If one would look at where and how these “successful” applicants came to “cracking” JEE, one should not be surprised to learn that they are the end products of an assembly-line factory way of production.

I would be the first to admit that devising a method of assessment that probes into the nature of how any student acquires knowledge or even ideating on how such an effort could be designed at all is way beyond me, but should not be so for those who are experts in education, including the high-level official from an older IIT referred earlier.

Would the alumni of IIT allow for such a systemic change in the mode of “recruiting”? Except for the writer of this post and the IIT official (who, by the way is an alumna of one of the older IITs!), I doubt anyone else would wish to tinker with the system that is conferring awards that are galore on those who pass through the portals of the institutions. Self-aggrandizement is as addictive as opioids, or perhaps even more so!

I have heard similar sentiments from another retired academic from an institute that had received the coveted status of an IIT not too long ago, say two decades. This academic goes deeper in his criticism of what he calls, “the IIT model”, with undisguised contempt. But, would his voice be heard? I doubt it. Blame self-preservation / self-indulgence / self-glorification and other self-ies.

The IIT model just takes away from what uncle Ralph said. Never acknowledge that knowledge spreads more through multiple interactions within the student body and in general, from society, than from the salaried teaching staff, who are there only to sow the seeds of learning, and the class rooms. The institution plays no role except to collect tuition fees and provide facilities for blossoming of knowledge.

There is a caveat here: if knowledge is blossoming in directions that are not in the best interest of the institution, it is no knowledge at all as it cannot be measured and exploited. That definitely would not suit those who are reaping the benefits of the IIT brand. The cascading effects of even tinkering with JEE will not be acceptable to those in positions of power (the IIT professors mentioned and this writer and others of that ilk excepted), no matter what Ralph Waldo Emerson said.

Students learn from the brand name of the institutions (the IITs), and not from the general student body. And these institutions will be populated by teachers who “like teaching but … don’t like the students” – so far away from the ideals of teaching.

What is more insidious is the teachers expect the students to learn.

Sorry Emerson.

Raghuram