I have always wondered as a Social Science teacher, what is it that I am trying to teach? What is my role as a teacher? How do I teach what I wish to teach more effectively? Navigating through facts and figures with the aid of an overarching idea, dramatic narration of events of historical importance, effective articulation of concepts and initiating stimulating discussions are often considered fundamental parts of a good class. Numerous pedagogies have been devised to give such practices a cohesive framework. As a teacher, is my role the mere tailoring of some content to fit a framework and present it? Is the process of teaching complete in the exploitation of an existing form using ideas and concepts that we are willing to platter through it?
As much as the question phrased this way makes the process of teaching sound entirely mechanical, it is saddening to observe that most teachers that I know of have submitted to such an idea of teaching. By doing so they have not only lost the spirit of teaching, but themselves in the process. Even when the role of a teacher is fulfilled to a great extent, the characters, students and teachers alike, remain intact, undisturbed and untouched. This makes a classroom a space for objective exchange of facts, figures, ideas and viewpoints. Knowledge is made to seem like an objective entity that can be tampered from time to time. The teachers and the students are divorced from the objects of knowledge and submit to a process that is entirely predetermined.
Even before the teacher walks into a class, the content and form are fixed and to a great extent, solidified. The beating of this rock-hard solid then becomes the agenda of the class. This is very similar to the problem that Vidwan TM Krishna points out in the format of a Kutcheri in Karnatik Music. In a recent interview he says:
“You sing a little alapana, little neraval, little swarams, sing the format correctly, it is considered a nalla katcheri (good concert). Now, we have reduced the entire music to how well a format is being presented. We have actually turned the table on the artistic form entirely. That to me is unacceptable. I am willing to say, if you consider this (format of a kutcheri) to be one kind of reflection of the artform, fine… But, if you say, this is the form, then it gets problematic. When the form becomes the performative, then the form is dead. The form has to exist irrespective of what the performative aspect of it is”
In both these cases, the objective and obligatory formalities of the process causes a stampede of the characters and subtle personas that exist behind the veil. We tend to forget that all these are human interactions in the first place. We tend to forget that the student and teacher, the artist and connoisseur are primarily human beings who are experiencing together in the process of collectively pursuing something.
Rigid pre-determination and a nearly delusional objectivity in these systems causes us to equate the success of it to the termination of the human. It is hilarious to observe that the system mainly survives due to the human that has either escaped it or fails to conform to it.
In education, such an objectivity makes the whole endeavor of knowledge transfer seem useless beyond being an inevitable process of graduation and acquiring a certificate that can open doors for employment opportunities. Social progression, that too economic social progression has become the ultimate goal of systemic knowledge transfer. The education system is now setting itself to produce financial success, not knowledge. The problem becomes gravely threatening when we as society conform to this notion and begin to assess human knowledge based on its economic viability.
This has not only killed the spirit of collective pursuit of knowledge, but also free-critical thinking. Our educational institutions are made to teach conformity in the place of criticality. As the American philosopher John Dewy put it, “individuals become the passive recipients of established knowledge”. The conformity to the establishment seems to be considered the success of the educational system. This seems to be deeply flawed. What is this mess that we have produced in the name of ‘education system’?
At this juncture, the question - “what is it that I am trying to teach?” becomes deeply problematic to ask and grapple with. To situate oneself within the confines of such a system, at the same time refrain from perpetuating its absurdities is a novel struggle to every human being who wishes to teach something. I am not sure if I have worked my way around this struggle. Maybe, this writing is a loud plea for help.
With most educators that I have spoken to about this, they have agreed with me until recognizing this to be a problem, but their response to it has mostly been, “but, we have no choice. If we have to survive as an institution in society, this conformity is essential”. This has always been a deeply demotivating response. In the process of protecting an institution, they trivialize the struggles of the individuals who give meaning to the institution in the first place. I too am offered conformity in the place of criticality as a solution.
I choose to respectfully deny this offer. I am not advocating for absolute non-conformity to any sort of educational system, but suggesting that the system that we currently have is deeply problematic and it is in no way the duty of its beholders to protect it against its own failures. I definitely condemn its protection at the cost of killing the very spirit of human interactions.
One way I began working my way around this was by talking about it with my students. We had long conversations about the limitations of a classroom within one ourselves. We questioned the labels of a student and teacher and recognized them to be imposed by the space and not self-proclaimed. These conversations were deeply illuminating for me. They were like great works of art, challenging the confines of a form by the skillful usage of it.
As much as these conversations helped us give new character to our classroom space, it did not change the way learning or teaching happened. The classroom remained as dirty and messy as it was with some new paint on the walls. Unfortunately, the dirt is not caused by the users of the space, but by the deposits of an unclean system that gives power to the space, making it a lot more difficult to deal with. However, I noticed very soon that what let the dirt stay there and stain the classroom was the comfort with which we let it be. The absurdities of a so-called “system” is comfortably accepted by its supposed custodians. It is saddening to notice teachers being indifferent to the fact that whatever they are teaching is absolutely irrelevant to either their lives or the student’s. Empty words are comfortably thrown around the classroom in the name of syllabus and no one is accountable for that.
What then would make any syllabus relevant to life? I feel it is the lived reality of individuals that the knowledge feeds into and grows out of. The life experiences of a person gives knowledge a character. Like a sheet of music that is meant to be performed, knowledge ought to be lived and experienced. John Dewy once defined education to be “the reconstruction of experiences”. In this process of reconstruction we begin to notice the distance between individual experiences or observations and a body of existing knowledge. Such a view shows us either the compatibility or incompatibility of reality and concept.
To give an example, I was recently at the Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata. I was able to sense a tension between the various objects that made up the space. For instance, a statue of a mother suckling her child, built to monumentalize the matriarchy of queen Victoria, the empress of India, had an Indian National flag flying right next to it. The position of the flag seemed intentional and it being just slightly taller than the sculpture of the mother, a political statement in itself. The colonized were now in a position of power and were exhibiting a monument that was a symbol of a power that they once submitted to.
There stood a statue of queen Victoria in the centre of the main hall, producing various responses from her beholders. Some called her a thief among other things, while others described her to be an exquisite exponent of Indo-Saracenic art. Some found the space to be beautiful and were moved by its magnificence. But, to some others, the space was nothing but an epitome of colonial loot and oppression. As much as the grandeur of the monument made it seem beautiful, its histories questioned it.
These contrasting responses that the space produced in the people and within me, pointed me to a certain tension that gave it a characteristic continuum from the day of its earliest conceptions by Lord Curzon in the early 20th century. The actual tension that existed during the construction of the monument was revitalized by the visible associations that people had with it. The historical tension was re-emphasized by the people, their actions and what they did to and in the place as such.
This tension created a disturbance in me. At that point, I found myself visibly struggling to think about the place. The existing knowledge that I had about the place and its history aided me in accessing this tension much easier. Once I felt that tension, I was disturbed by it. This disturbance was mainly caused after I noticed the abject distance between the apparatus of my ways of thinking about the space and the actualities of the space.
Such disturbances, sorts of ruptures that are felt and observed at the juncture of this distance seem to be the existential precursors to the process of learning. Then, learning becomes the perpetual attempt to mitigate that distance. Acknowledging the perpetuity of the process seems to be a virtue of an ardent disciple. At this stage, the role of a teacher, if anything, seems just to help create that disturbance or rupture. From there on, we are all students and teachers alike.
This should not entail that the teacher is the eternal supplier of disturbances. In other words, students should not be dependent on the teacher to recognize the distance between reality and concept and let themselves be disturbed by it. Even when the learners feel and recognize the disturbance, what motivates each of them to attempt to mitigate it is extremely variegated. The human response to the incapacity to its own concept is very diverse. The teacher is not at all in control of these responses. How then can a teacher motivate students to take up the burden of learning?
While talking about this to a teacher of mine, he said:
“Ultimately, the students should be able to see joy in your way of learning and being. For them to see that joy, you must be that joy. You must be able to just be in the classroom. Little devils in the name of systems will continuously try to prevent it. We must fight that. We must be free and able to just be. That will do wonders. Fortunately or unfortunately, the outcomes of it are not very palpable, but we will be able to sense it. If the students see joy in your way of being and find themselves in that joy, they are on board. They will take it from there on. Don’t worry!”
