Teaching is Dead

 After my increasingly frequent vocal tirade on the inevitable demise of the quality of university teaching, especially in the public sector, I felt that it is finally time to pen down my thoughts. The public sector is rightfully of particular interest as its largely run by public aka the taxpayer money, still ideally works on the principle that education is a right, not privilege and is an undisputed hope for several to climb the ladder, both social and economic.

Teaching has historically, traditionally, religiously and conventionally been associated with utmost respect. A respect that is commanded for the highest, selfless and devout service aimed not only at imparting knowledge but on character building, mentoring and inspiring. Other than the religious ordainments, the folklore in subcontinent is filled with tales of Bulle Shah who unrelentingly tried to appease his ‘murshid’ for 12 long years, to the extent of joining the dancing class and performing to “Teray Ishq Nachaya” (your love made me dance) for winning the teacher’s heart. Similar tales of devotion to the teacher are found in Mahabharta where a disciple Ekalavya, who is exceptional at archery, cuts his right thumb out of respect and compliance of his mentor, Dronacharya. Jump to the first quarter of 21^st century, a university teachers job security is dependent on the feedback provided by the students.  At the end of semester, the students get to tell if the course contents were appropriate, adequately covered, whether the teacher was knowledgeable or not, compassionate or not, delivered the knowledge properly or not, etc. Let us draw an analogy to better understand the preposterousness of this system, let the children give feedback on their parents’ parenting every six months. Let them answer, if the parents are qualified enough to be parents, if they were delivering parenthood well, if they were compassionate enough, punctual enough and if not so, they should be fired from parenting and replaced by more appropriate ones. In the presence of the prevailing student-based feedback system, the teachers are forced to resort to student pleasing, after all, social intelligence dictates that.    

There is no denying that appropriate checks and balance need to be in place. How about the long held academic tradition of peer review or even better a blind peer review. The quality of assessments taken, the correctness of answer script checking and grading, the appropriateness of course contents can be assessed by blind peer review. The departmental chair and faculty dean can ensure that classes were conducted on time, as per timetable and up to the mark. Perhaps adherence to this duty would leave them less idle time for politics severely hampering the academic culture in the public sector.

This is just one side of the coin, and perhaps the less grave one. The academic fairy god mother, Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan, had a brilliant idea several years ago. A transformative idea which was to inculcate the true essence of a university into the universities in Pakistan.  Reality: Neither was HEC a fairy god mother, neither was the idea transformative. The HEC laid down a brute criterion for faculty promotion or selection to the next cadre: publish a certain number of a certain category of academic papers, have a certain number of years to count for so-called experience and a relevant degree. Let me check, did this include any mention of quality or quantity of teaching? While the other glaring flaws in this criterion are a subject of another tirade, most notably this has no mention, no weightage and no credit for teaching which was and is the paramount job of university teachers. To add insult to injury, the salary and absolutely any other financial and fringe benefits of a public sector university teacher are not linked to the quality or quantity of teaching. In fact, there is overall a very low positive correlation between performance and perks in the public sector.

While the statement by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “God is dead, and we have killed him,” unsurprisingly caused an uproar, it did not have its literal meaning, but the idea of God and by extension the Judeo-Christian morality has been destroyed by human’s development. The delinking of any promotion, financial and fringe benefit from the quality and quantity of teaching coupled with a hanging sword of the repercussions of any negative students’ feedback has led to the death of the quality of university teaching. If not fully dead, it’s on the ventilator, for sure.

This brings us to the last motivation which a persisting soul desirous of teaching passionately may still hold on to; the respect associated with teaching. Unfortunately, this commodity is also in rarity now.  The respect offered to a teacher is largely an individual action now with an overall degradation in society. Moreover, what if a teacher, who is a human too after all, is not so altruistic as is expected? What if he or she expects a reward, fair remuneration, added motivation for performing well and job security.

Normally known as a resilient and optimistic soul, I can’t end this without an appeal to revisit the policy at national and provincial level. When debating the quality of the graduate and the resulting low employability, it is crucial to focus on the quality of the hatchery. Afterall, stale ingredients will not produce fresh bread.