JOIN USStudent politics has been vibrant in India till recently. The political activities of students on an organisational basis became challengingly prominent only during the 1960s. The late 1950s and the 1960s witnessed the birth of several student organisations of different political shades.
There have been moments cherished as well as reviled when campus politics was at its peak. Many of the current ministers and famous politicians are products of the lively campuses where student politics was the ‘call of the nation’.
Hot debates, discussions and hectic campaigns were held in these campuses; from hostels to canteens, sometimes even hitting the streets. We read about the active involvement of stud-ents in the field of higher education – demanding concessions, confronting authorities, leading agitations, engaging in pitched battles with the police and finally, gaining representation on the various university bodies.
Committed to the idea of democracy, these were the times when students were involved in decision-making processes. However, citing problems of law and order, a strange reductionist approach has been undertaken throughout India, in the past decade.
Instead of addressing the structural issues that have led to such a problem of flagrant violence, the governments and academic administrations have conveniently clamped down all democratic decision-making bodies in our college and university campuses.
Democratic elections are being replaced by autocratic nominations to student bodies to promote discipline. Nowadays, students are rarely invited to become active partakers in their own schooling. Though education is typically about working with students, a range of punishments and rewards are used to enforce compliance with an agenda that students barely have any opportunity to influence. Hence, they rarely feel any sense of self-determination.
Personalised education is not great fun for the parent or the administration of institutions today due to various reasons. In institutions designated as progressive, democratic, open, free, experimental or alternative, developmental, constructive, holistic, learner-centred or discovery-based, students are growing more and more repressive.
The educators who shape the curriculum of our so called advanced pupil-centric instruction, rarely bother to consult those who are to be educated.
There is plenty of enthusiasm about reforms such as outcome-based education but little concern about bringing students into the process of formulating the outcomes. Teachers are forced to compete for the business of parent-consumers and not for creating a vibrant classroom for students. Taking the class through the prescribed lesson plan and discipline is forced upon the instructor.
Colossal effects
The destructive effects of keeping students powerless are colossal. Students can have a higher self-esteem and a greater feeling of academic competence when their sense of self-determination is bolstered in the classroom. An education system which values democracy should think about preparing students to participate in a democratic culture or to transform a culture into a democracy, as the case may be.
Endorsements of autocracy that, ‘This is my institution and I will decide what the student should learn and what the teacher must teach’, is growing with the rising trend of independence of education pro-viders in the liberalised system.
This tendency to decide unilaterally on almost everything that goes on in the institution from curriculum design to grading policy, fatally affects our current education. If children are to take responsibility for their own behaviour, they must be given sufficient responsibility.
Youngsters are less likely to comply with a rule when they have no role in inventing or even discussing it. Every teacher who is told what material to cover, when to cover it and how to evaluate a student’s performance knows that enthusiasm for one’s work quickly evaporates in the face of being controlled. The exact thing holds true for students. If they are deprived of free will, they will be deprived of motivation and the capability to pose questions.
Under the aegis of the proposed new education policy, countrywide deliberations are ensuing on 20 different themes to improve our education sector. In the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, the topic “Sustaining Student Support System” is being debated throughout the month of September. It is essential to consider issues of student empowerment on such platforms if we need to build a strong nation through a potent youth force.
(The writer teaches at Christ University, Bengaluru)