Prof Javed Mughal
Subject-combinations must be subordinate to a student’s choice and aptitude. Anyone who has a sense to understand the thematic crux of the matter must not forget that it is the student, not the stream of studies that is indispensable for the desirable progress of a nation. At the time of extending admissions to the upcoming scholars in Colleges particularly, leaving all parochialism and short-sightedness, we must allow our students to go ahead with the streams of their personal preference for the very simple reason that it is the student, not the parents or the teachers, who knows better about how to go ahead in academic field. Knowing not exactly what happens in the Colleges of other states of this country, here in our state we kill the very incentive and instinct of a student by imposing subjects on him and then to make the matter worse we brag of promoting subject without caring even a fig for the very aptitude of the student forgetting that his personal opinion and his self-assessment is more important than anything else to decide his future.
The imposition of a stream on the students in the name of subject promotion is not only a setback to our nation but a criminal treatment with the students as well. I would not hesitate even a bit to ascribe this approach of the so called Educational Authorities infected with a mental mediocrity, to an unethical attitude and inhuman stance. The constitution of India confers the right of education on an individual in this country but unfortunately the poor-brained institutions quell this right by creating stumbling blocks on the smooth track of this process by allotting the subjects of the Institution’s choice at the cost of the aspirant’s taste and capacity.
This way we produce reluctant graduates and postgraduates who have already extended an irreparable loss to this nation. Mr. A wants to opt for Geography but is pushed into Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit and so on which are no less than a wild and dark desert for him with no way out at all. And all this is done from a very substandard angle of thought that some of the subjects are dying and they need to be protected. This is absolute nonsense.
We are saving the subjects at the cost of the human resource. We are escorting the subject to the point of safety but butchering the very career-oriented capabilities, choice and preference of a mealy mouthed taught who is going to be the custodian of this nation very shortly. How can a student, interested in medical stream, do equally well in Non-Medical Science or some other domain? How can a student, who has studied Geography up to 12th standard, can excel in sociology forcibly allotted to him which he has never even heard of earlier? We must learn from the west where the detailed scanning of a child’s brain is conducted before putting him on the track of education and where the interest of the child is given total edge over anything else is taken to be of central significance in the entire educational process.
But here in India we could not think, despite being even five thousand years old civilized society that the mental inclination of a student and his own choice is something on which his entire career depends and on which further depends the whole success of a nation. First our child is misled by his parents in regard to the subject-selection and then he falls into the hands of his robotic teachers who, without having any vision, are there in the institutions deputed to sell stale ideas.
This attitude has to be changed. Only then we can go ahead successfully. If the subject dies, let it die. A subject that does not have guts to cope up with the changing phase of time and circumstances must be allowed to die down its own death. Let all these subjects make their importance manifest on the students so that the later get automatically convinced and attracted. Most of our students are reluctant about certain subjects, needless to mention here, only because the later have ceased to be the source of their survival and everything in the world now-a-days is seen and understood in terms of survival only. In suburban Colleges of our state, the situation is so dismal that sometimes my heart sinks in despair to see our so-called professors behaving like dealers, salesmen, hawkers and agents of particular subjects. They compel the students to choose certain streams of studies and most of the time the teacher on the Admission Committee snatches the admission form from a student and fills in the subjects which the poor student does not even intend to go for.
I don’t have any objection if a student is properly educated and convinced about the significance of a particular subject because most of the times the students, being inexperienced, can’t decide properly and meaningfully as to what to choose and what not. Under such conditions they need to be enlightened so that they can make a right choice at the right time; but to compel a student just to promote a particular stream without giving an iota of importance to the student’s aptitude is absolutely unfair that speaks either of our incompetence or our despotic behavior which is not only unethical but unlawful as well. The students can of-course be put to certain tests before allotting to them the streams of their choice and they can be rejected and selected on the basis of their performance but to fix up the number of vacancies in the streams and to make efforts only to increase the number of students in various domains of subjects is the most abominable act in itself. We have in fact developed an obnoxious habit of carving a Doctor out of an Engineer and vice versa caring a fig for the counter-effects of our miasmic approach.
This is the reason that we could not engineer good brains in our country to the extent we were supposed to have done. And this is the only reason, our country, despite having very good and well equipped educational centers, has utterly failed in fundamental research and is still parasite on the applied approaches which are not so fruitful for us. The student-centered educational system is now-a-days a bygone story and what we are doing is nothing but just cutting our nose to the spite of our brow.
Time is to wake up to the clamorous demand of current circumstances and bring an end to all these criminal, anti-student and anti-country educational mechanisms where the talent is subordinated to the subject-supremacy or subject-promotion. We can’t afford to sacrifice the best and the most productive human resource of our state and country on the altar of subject or stream-promotion. Let the subject die down its own death if it is not capable of standing on its feet. Only those areas of studies and research have right to stay back in the society that have guts to withstand the growing and burning demand of the current set-up of cut-throat competition.
There should be no limit to the choice of subjects for the students especially in the Colleges. They must be free to opt for the subjects of their own taste. Yes, excepting all satanic designs to ensnare this mealy-mouthed and innocent lot of generation for promotion of certain insignificant streams of studies, there must be an arrangement for the proper and honest counseling of students in regard to the purpose-oriented and better choice of the fields of studies. On the contrary, pitch-forking them forcibly into the abyss of certain limping streams is a criminal act and must be discouraged rather banned forthwith.
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