Prof Javed Mughal
Have we transformed our pupils, to the best of our satisfaction, into a welcome-lot of society since the day of our inception into this pure, pious and prophets’ profession? Have we really succeeded in inculcating the moral and ethical values among our students in day-to-day society? Did we turn our youth into respectful and respectable citizens in the country? Is our teaching enough to make our tiny tots intellectually well off? Are we competent enough to win the hearts of the students? Are we in a position to justify our stance as teachers? Do we genuinely know the subject of our and our family’s survival? Are we not criminal somewhere deep down in our heart and mind towards our innocent and immaculate lot of Lerners? Such are the questions as most often pester my mind whenever I relax into Indolence in my small dilapidated, old and ailing and shabby dwelling-corner of a College Residential Complex musing over what is happening to our young generation due to our routine negligence. We can’t speak two lines spontaneously unless we are fully programmed with cut-and-dried and stale slices of knowledge. We, the teachers, are at a stage now where our students are ahead of us by many leaps, and hence we fail to come unto their expectations and prove pointless and insignificant on the touch-stone of their observation. The fact remains that the current society is mainly infested with the ham-fisted teachers and guides-the guides who unfortunately could not guide themselves properly in life but now unfortunately stand saddled with the responsibility to guide the current sharp and difficult generation. If some impartial and independent agency is set on the job of conducting a detailed survey to gauge up the academic worth and mental level of teachers, it shall be shocking to be awake to the heart-hearting spectacle at the moment. Most of them especially the College teachers-the so-called and self-styled Professors have managed entry into this dignified profession through backdoors and consequently have rendered an irreparable damage to the fabric of education in general and Higher Education in particular.
If one comes across 20 College teachers from any one of the colleges at random and asks them to pen down a small note on any of the most familiar subject and I fear that 75% of them will not be capable of doing so. When this is the fact of the matter, how can the desirable betterment of the innocent students be expected from them? These poor brained-teachers, when fail to convince and impress their taught by creating a congenial atmosphere in the class-rooms, use the rod of iron to keep them mealy-mouthed and tongue-tied. Such a lot of teachers pitch-fork the students into such a debilitating and precarious situation that a student does not even intend to move his tongue and lips in the class. His class room happens to be worse than a confinement cell for him. At the same time the most dangerous weapon given to the teachers in the Colleges is the Internal Assessment which serves as a safety valve for most of the cruel, crazy and cynic teachers who, when fail to attract the students with their potential and fine qualities of head and heart, use this instrument of Internal Assessment and shortage of attendance etc to keep them under control.
As a result, modern society is faced with a great slump in the arena of practical and qualitative education. It pains me a lot confess a very heart-rending reality about more than eighty percent of College professors and even a major chunk of University Professors as well that they can neither write a small paragraph on the spur of moment nor can speak a convincing English language for five minutes at a stretch. The society which is infested with such disgusting souls (normally called the builders of nation) is sure to meet a disastrous end end making no proud history at all. A majority of our College Professors are very good cooks, plumbers, electricians, drivers, clerks, carpenter, mason, rag-pickers, scavengers, coolies and everything so much so that they are the best conspirators, vicious planners, leg-pullers and intriguers but unfortunately they cease to be good teachers which they are enormously paid for. My unfortunate eyes have seen so many professors doing the menial jobs and being exploited at the worst and put on the job of a coolie but the sorry part of the entire story is that these Professors become very happy doing so just because they can’t teach for want of adequate knowledge of the subject of their specialization. Sometimes I become flabbergasted to find even a clerk to be speaking more convincingly that a highly paid Professor. Aristotle was not a small political scientist who read about 158 constitutions of the world and went to Egypt to import the concept of Functional Specialization and not only implemented in Greece but also stressed all the nations of the world to implement this system claiming that it will render an over-burgeoning impetus to progress and prosperity of a country. The Functional Specialization means all the people of the country must be trained at their allotted functions and jobs and should deliver the best in the same so that the country can progress in a systematic manner. The expert of one stream can do the best only in his own field and the people trained in one domain can’t be competent enough to yield good results in other areas. A professionally trained carpenter can not be an equally good mason; a plumber can’t turn out to be a good electrician and so on. But in our system especially in the field of education that too in Higher Education, some professors are afraid of teaching as if they were to face the dinosaurs, anacondas or alligators in the class who can masticate and belch them out.
They try their level best to avoid the classes but are all time ready to do any damn thing below the dignity; even if they are asked to shine the shoes of their boss. How shabby a College Professor looks rounding a ladle in big cauldron; holding a shovel and picking up the mortar; climbing an electric post and restoring the electricity; doing the job of a carpenter and so on but not doing justice to the promotion of his subject and students! One gets astonished, nay, shocked to notice some of the senior professors running the retail shops of tuition also. They are vendors of scraps of sub-standard lessons and doing all the ignoble business to satiate their monitory lust. Yes, there is no harm in knowing other trades. If you possess a bunch of certain other efficiencies apart from being the master of your own trade where you are paid to deliver the best, it is okay but at the cost your own allotted assignment everything else for money is an unpardonable sin. If a teacher, who gets pained and panicked even at the smallest and ignorable carelessness in regard to his students; who loves his students genuinely; who finds no difference between his hobby and profession like G B Shaw and who happens to be a person of spotless character and integrity, goes for private tuition due to certain reasons, there is no harm according to me. But here in our Colleges particularly the truth is quite on the contrary. A professor gets ready to lick up the dust if he or she is exempted from the classes. It hurts me a lot when I see some of my colleagues being reprimanded, scolded or browbeaten for getting late for the classes, for making no tangible performance, for being decrepit at the subjects of their bread and butter and for hundred and one other reasons. Under such circumstances, how can the quality of education or students formation be expected. I think for a quite some time, the govt. must come forward with a stringent legislation and assurance to implement it as well so that the needful can be achieved and the entire academic mechanism can be brought back on the rails.
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