Online learning, democracy and transforming higher education

Everyone is concerned about their wards’ school and college education when COVID-19 is hitting its stride in what appears to be at least a middle distance race, or more appropriately cross country running. You do not know what kind of terrain you would encounter around the bend.

In the name of transforming higher education under COVID-19 situation, there are many bends but all of them are turning only one way – towards the right. Why right? When you turn non-democratic that is the turn, to the right.

I am an unreconstructed contrarian. I like to probe why someone said something, what was their motivation. You have been warned.

In the particular issue of higher education, there have always been cries of “needed reforms”, without mentioning what those “reforms” could be so that intelligent discussions could be held. No, it is always “reforms” and only “reforms”. Of course, it is no different than in economic “reforms”, though the latter has certain shibboleths, under the overarching umbrella of “Neo-liberalism”.

Now, higher education has been targeted for similar kind of transformation.

It was in the early to mid 1960s, that my father would line up thrice or four times a year at the elementary school to pay tuition fees. However, there were students whose parents could not save enough for 2 to three months to pay in such “bulk” amounts; parents of these students paid the fees on monthly basis. I was unaware of all these distinctions.

Then came the announcement that school education would be free. My parents must have let out a sigh of relief but more audible would have been the sighs of those parents who paid tuition fees on a monthly basis. That was democratization of education.

And, of course, like the Hegelian Thesis-Anti-thesis-Synthesis development, over the past say four decades, the democracy aspect of high school education has been sent to the backstage and what we have is the neo-liberal private schoolism dominating high school education.

Neo-liberalism has no red signals. Now, it is on to higher-education (aka college education, focused on engineering and medicine).

In-person instruction in classrooms is so yesterday. It is now, and for all time to come, online education. Without COVID-19, this shift would have been gradual but now, it is abrupt.

I seem to have underestimated the speed of the cross country run. It is more like a cross country sprint. In the immediate wake of the newspaper article the link above refers to, comes another, given as reference below.

We are to think of the “...enormous possibilities presented by the pandemic to the education sector.”

That sounded like what the once Chief of Staff of the US President Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel said, “You don’t want ever a crisis to go to waste.” Yes, COVID-19 is a crisis and you just take a hard right. Those on the left will all be thrown out (there is a little bit of physics here!)

The article claims, as the first aim of education, “... provide knowledge in the relevant discipline (my emphasis).” Period.

College first year students are not yet out of their teens, and as has been said many times, there are avenues galore for a late teenager to create a life for oneself that satisfies her own inner desires and ambitions. Parents are so proud and claim that their wards know so much more about the opportunities than they themselves do.

However, it is mainly their parents who decide for their wards what the stream of college education it would be for the latter. Deeply immersed in their own life trajectories, parents with help (likely unsolicited) from people in their social circles decide what the “in” thing is at that time and direct their wards towards that.

This is not idle arm chair philosophy. I have seen enough students hating engineering but pursuing studies in that stream under pressure from their parents – in one instance, studying computer science and engineering when her interests lay in English literature. That is only one example among scores, in one college among thousands.

My question is what the “relevant discipline” is. Without even trying to raise this relevant question, the idea is to locate a “relevant discipline”! Good luck, parents.

The second aim is, “impart them with the skills needed for their jobs/enterprises.” Ignore the screwed up grammar (easier said than done as it is supposedly from a high level government functionary). So, education is truly nothing more than vocational training, employment oriented. This is emphasized later, “... [graduates joining the] workforce have practically no skills or knowledge that add to their employability.” Education = Skills Training. Ouch ... that hurts.

When I was in X Standard (1969-70), one of my teachers, perhaps being ahead of the syllabus, spent one full hour asking students what we would like to grow up to be. When it was my turn, I said, I will study engineering and be an engineer; I expected a pat on the back, as too few people in my class would have opted for that. But, my teacher’s reaction was exact opposite of that. He excoriated me for being so unaware of what is happening around me. So selfish of me. Why did I not think of doing something for the society?

I did not know what hit me, but surely something did, at least that moment. It was soon forgotten (I do not even think that I mentioned this to my parents). The thought was implanted in me that day and it continues to surface now and then. I am forever indebted to that teacher, though I do not use any of the other things that he taught me.

Just imagine a teacher who prepares you for a job, and not for life. Would I remember him or her at my age, 65+? I doubt it; even if I did, it would not be with a modicum of respect the profession deserves.

This directly translates into saying that teachers must teach only for that moment. There is nothing called “life-long learning” that parents want their wards to be exposed to, particularly from teachers. Good for the teachers!

The third point is said without any conviction. It appears to me as something written in the tone of “tokenism” – “...the teaching-learning process is expected to mould their character ...” to be more outward looking.

It is true that after getting a job and being employed for some time, young adults do say that they are have learnt more in the 6 months on the job than what they did over four years in college; said with a tone of contempt. The article carries the message as well as the tone. But, it is never acknowledged that what they have learnt on the job is extremely narrowly focused – to get the job done; because, that is where profit is. Education for profit, for oneself (gainful employment – a catch phrase in the marriage market) and others, mostly the latter.

I have heard from a retired IAS officer (Chief Secretary of a state), that his job has been one of continuous learning, from the training phase in Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie to the day of his retirement from the job. The intense study regime he followed to pass IAS exams and also successfully filter through the interview process, he never said, were useless. Somehow such a message is never given to students in college, and no wonder they end up thinking that college education is useless. Teachers are to be blamed for this.

What does industrial internship do for the ill-prepared third year students? Nothing, except a certificate from the employer. Check that. It is during this phase, as unprepared as she may be, the “student intern” (an ugly, meaningless phrase) realizes the importance of “networking”, the idea that never appealed to me.

Now, I come to the sucker punch. Does anything I have said above relate to the mode of teaching – in-class or online? No.  

The article says nothing good about our educational system, and fortunately for me, I do not necessarily disagree with that. But, suddenly out of the blue, as it were, the article has moved the goal post. Now, it talks about, “light, home-based proctored exam”. Earlier to that, it also criticized the almost static syllabus teachers are forced to follow. A series of rhetorical questions, unconnected with the mode of teaching-learning, like the pressure on teachers to complete  “every bit of that syllabus”, subjecting the students to pressures of examinations to “evaluate students’ knowledge of that syllabus”, follow.

None of the above demand that they cannot be accomplished through in-class instructions. What COVID-19 has offered us is a chance to introduce such changes – this is the claim. Absolute disconnect. No where the article says, much less endeavour to prove, that the above “reforms” cannot be done in the system we are operating under, and equally importantly, these can be done by taking instructions online.

What do they say? Non sequitur?

Yes, precisely.

There is more. Most importantly, the effort to promote online instruction is non-democracy, ideally defined. I have had the experience of teaching students through Zoom, conducting the so-called viva voce through Google Class Room, and have had meetings through Google Meet (as compelled by higher authorities).

I have heard cows moo in the background, seen a student sitting under a thatched roof (a barsati, must be), and also experienced connectivity problems. When in doubt, under such circumstances, I was liberal in evaluation.

So, if you do demand online education as the standard - quite aspirational, I would admit - it cannot be through the instrumentality of a crisis, whatever Rahm Emanuel may have said. The systems have to be thought through, accessibility and connectivity must be universal, affordability must be factored into, and most importantly, the current deficiencies in the educational system must not be exported to the online platforms. It cannot be a seasonal migration.

Education itself is an evolutionary process, and so it makes sense to change it in evolutionary steps, however rapid the change in the job market is. Education is beyond being a mere ticket to a comfortable life.

Revolution does not sit well with educational reforms.

Raghuram Ekambaram  

Reference

1.    Jayesh Ranjan, 2020-07-24, “Transforming higher education”, The Hindu

 

Post-script: You may ask why post this matter as a blog when I could have sent it to the newspaper. Well, I have done that a couple of times, many years ago. But, the paper has changed. Now, to get any criticism of what has appeared in the paper published, one needs to have the imprimatur of high office (though ironically it is always claimed that the ideas expressed are the writer’s only; no association with his office or the paper should be imputed). So, now you understand.