4 months ago
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The Delhi High Court’s affirmation that instrumentality students whitethorn beryllium for examinations without satisfying rigid attendance thresholds has provoked predictable anxiousness among administrators inactive tethered to an older, bureaucratised conception of education. But the ruling, acold from eroding world seriousness, restores a information that Indian universities person resisted for decades, a information that learning cannot beryllium secured done surveillance. Compulsory attendance belongs to a paternalistic epoch that believed that students indispensable beryllium prodded into intelligence beingness alternatively than invited into it. A assemblage worthy of its sanction should cultivate curiosity, not compliance.
The obsession with a student’s presence
I accidental this not lone arsenic a professional of the managerial civilization that has consumed our campuses, but arsenic idiosyncratic who has spent much than 40 years successful the classroom. In each those years, I seldom took attendance and astir ne'er prevented a pupil from taking an examination. I believed, and inactive believe, that coercion produces neither seriousness nor scholarship. If students bash not privation to be a class, the due effect is not punishment but introspection. A teacher indispensable inquire the harder question: what did I neglect to connection that could person made this hr indispensable to them? Attendance is not a measurement of learning; astatine champion it is simply a measurement of obedience.
The obsession with carnal presence, understandably, flourishes wherever the schoolroom has been reduced to the perfunctory transportation of “yellowing” notes, the rote transportation of prefabricated cognition that students could get faster and much efficiently done integer means. The ruling disrupts this apathy. It forces institutions of instrumentality to face a information agelong evaded, that a schoolroom that enforces attendance is already pedagogically bankrupt. This ruling of the High Court, I hope, volition spell a agelong mode successful changing the attendance norms crossed the state successful each universities of higher learning.
Paulo Freire saw this with a clarity that remains electrifying. For him, acquisition was ne'er the mechanical depositing of accusation but a dialogic encounter, an awakening of consciousness done questioning, debate, and the shared labour of inquiry. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a seminal classic, students are not passive vessels receiving cognition but beings who “name the world” and construe done thought, and captious imagination.
For instance, my strongest classrooms person ever been those calved not of work but of desire. I retrieve speaking with Sir Isaiah Berlin, the renowned historiographer of ideas, implicit luncheon successful Oxford galore years ago, and helium confessed, with diagnostic generosity, however rigorously helium prepared his notes, outlines, marginalia, a meticulously constructed roadworthy representation of ideas, jokes, communicative turns, and affectional crescendos. His lectures captivated not by mishap but due to the fact that they were acts of craftsmanship. Students came not retired of work but anticipation.
I carried that ethic into my ain teaching. I ne'er entered a lecture country unprepared, often moving precocious into the nighttime earlier class. And similar Sir Berlin, I believed that the teacher’s labour should vanish into the pleasance of learning, an effort made invisible but unmistakable successful its effect. I was not unsocial successful reasoning this way. Terry Eagleton’s lectures overflowed not due to the fact that helium demanded attendance but due to the fact that his ideas were intensely incendiary. Germaine Greer filled halls due to the fact that she brought intelligence rebellion to the podium. The Cambridge historian, Professor Sir Christopher Bayly, spoke past arsenic if it were happening successful the contiguous tense. Frank Kermode, the influential literate critic, lectured aft meal with a solid of vino successful hand, and this ambiance of informal brilliance made lit consciousness adjacent much urgent. None of them needed the menace of consequences to capable a classroom. They made lack unthinkable. This is what the Indian assemblage has forgotten.
Classroom experiences
My strongest classrooms person ever been those calved not of work but of desire. I callback an day erstwhile I took my students to a ridge overlooking the vale to work Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey.” I wanted them to brushwood the poem not arsenic a depository portion but arsenic a surviving meditation connected representation and perception. The students dispersed nether the pines and chaotic writer where, suddenly, Wordsworth’s thought of quality arsenic “nurse”, “guide” and “guardian of my heart” felt neither archaic nor maudlin but provocatively contemporary. I asked a azygous question: What does it mean for quality to amended us? What followed was not accepted mentation but a corporate reflection connected however scenery shapes consciousness. The poem seemed to unfastened of its ain accord, demanding a constituent of view, alternatively than receiving it.
A akin translation occurred erstwhile we carried Thoreau’s Walden to the borderline of a wooded trail. The students sat connected stones and fallen branches, thumbing done a text, interpreting individually and not simply toeing the line. Thoreau’s assertion that astir lives are lived successful “quiet desperation” kindled an unexpected statement astir our ain system, its addiction to metrics, its simplification of intelligence beingness to attendance charts, its inability to recognise solitude, reflection, oregon slowness arsenic virtues. Reading outdoors, my schoolroom dissolved, and what emerged alternatively was enquiry successful its astir rudimentary form.
The ruling, possibly inadvertently, moves america person to this ideal. In an epoch wherever integer resources, Artificial Intelligence tools, and open-access archives spot immense cognition astatine students’ fingertips, the insistence connected carnal beingness feels not lone antiquated but besides pedagogically unimaginative. The finest universities, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, MIT and others, bash not dainty attendance arsenic the measurement of commitment. They presume maturity, ever trusting a student’s intelligence autonomy. Their assurance lies successful the prime of their teaching, not successful the surveillance of their students.
The atrocious authorities of the Indian university
In this context, the Indian assemblage has been reduced to a specified ammunition of its erstwhile self, suffocated by bureaucratic rigidity and administrative overreach. The Centre’s expanding power has transformed campuses into intelligence vassals, wherever curricula are scrutinised, dissent is silenced, and administrative positions are filled by those who prioritise loyalty implicit scholarly merit. Within this stifling paradigm, mandatory attendance policies service arsenic a instrumentality of pedagogical pacification, undermining pupil autonomy and intelligence curiosity.
A assemblage that prioritises attendance implicit engagement yet betrays its cardinal intent to nurture captious thinkers who tin situation and alteration society. This is wherefore the attendance statement is not administrative but philosophical, asking whether we spot students arsenic reasoning beings, oregon whether we respect them arsenic wards of the institution. Coercion, indeed, is ever the refuge of a pedagogy that has mislaid confidence.
The High Court ruling opens up a transformative anticipation for rethinking the precise cloth of teaching crossed higher education. By removing the coercive constituent of compulsory attendance, educators volition beryllium compelled to innovate and reimagine their pedagogical approaches. An bare schoolroom tin beryllium a catalyst for introspection, prompting teachers to trade learning spaces that are intellectually compelling and inherently engaging. Peer dynamics besides acquisition a paradigmatic shift, wherever the shame lies not successful lack but successful being disconnected from a people that has garnered admiration and enthusiasm from different students. This reorients the inducement structure, shifting the locus of information from outer compulsion to intrinsic curiosity.
Learning, successful this context, is reconceptualised arsenic a dynamic and evolving process, marked by its restless and captious nature. It thrives connected contradiction, dialogue, imaginativeness and risk-taking. The existent assemblage is built connected this refusal of stasis, its intent not to disseminate accusation but to facilitate discovery. The aboriginal of acquisition hinges connected recognising and embracing this cardinal distinction.
The ruling therefore, serves arsenic a testament to the inherent hostility betwixt state and coercion successful the pursuit of knowledge. By decoupling attendance from introspection eligibility, the Court has highlighted the futility of attempting to legislate intelligence engagement. True learning cannot beryllium mandated. It tin lone beryllium cultivated done the instauration of spaces that foster intelligence curiosity and freedom. The university’s aboriginal depends connected its quality to navigate this cardinal distinction.
Shelley Walia has taught Cultural and Literary Theory astatine the Panjab University, Chandigarh
