Language, exempted?

My heart aches for language subject teachers in our schools and colleges. As a marginalised lot, their cup of misery often overflows. Of the many imperfections in India’s educational system, the one that stings the most is the hegemony of the ‘core’ subjects. For the unfamiliar, English and other languages are non-core subjects, and all else is ‘core’. Ironically, but blissfully, our educators continue to perpetuate this national malady.

By its mere coinage, the ‘core’, allows certain subject teachers a sense of false importance within a space that is expected to practise equality, at all costs. Consequently, the ‘non-core’ category feels inferior and even insecure. I will tell you why.

Let us say the college is holding an event. It is no coincidence that language hours are always the first option to slot the event. Then, if the said event is a lecture, but there is not enough audience in the hall, the quickest remedy is to send the language class students to fill up the empty chairs. The rationale behind this ‘sound’ judgement is, students will learn more by attending such lectures than from language classes.

The situation gets insufferable when the ‘core’ departments conduct their own events during language hours and don’t bother informing the language department. The erudite conclusion here is, English and Languages departments are ‘service’ departments, hence cannot claim distinct identities. The untold but implicit meaning seems to be: “You are lesser mortals, destined to serve us.”

I have often wondered about this skewed logic. Aren’t languages the most important, for, how else will students grasp, express, and practise the knowledge of the so-called ‘core’ subjects?

Besides the step-motherly treatment, it is the brutal condescension that hurts the language teachers. To recount the anecdote narrated by my friend, who heads the English department at a popular city college: The head of a science department requested she not send a particular teacher to their class. When asked why, she was told that the teacher was incompetent. My friend was put off. Hiding her anger, she asked,
“Are all your faculty competent?” The answer she got stumped her: “No, we also have incompetent ones, but we have instructed our students to put up with them because they are teaching ‘core’ subjects.”

After several years of imbibing the knowledge of the ‘core’ to what extent it is useful in real life is a thought that has frequently crossed my mind. Honestly, I had not found a convincing answer until recently.

At a weekend party, a friend who never missed a single Chemistry class in college, but is currently employed in a bank, winked at me while pouring a drink and said: “Finally, I have found the use for my three years of struggle in labs measuring liquids in pipettes and burettes.”