When NITWITS crack NET and JRF?

We are not born stupid, but ignorant.  It is education wrongly imparted that makes us stupid, said Bertrand Russell long ago.  When Russell said this, he must not have had Indian education in mind.  Surely, if he had, he would have marvelled at its colossal ability to turn not merely the simply ignorant but even the intelligent into idiots.

No, I m not referring to the much maligned new-gen ultra-morons who insist on the desi origins of such technologies like cryogenic engineering and cloning.  Ever since EVMs decided to give Gujarat ka Lalla a second term, I too am training my mind to believe that that indeed is the case.  After all, if Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle truly had its origin in ancient India, who in his right mind could be certain of anything certain? My only doubt is this: why all this brouhaha over the Chandrayaan mission when such things were routine ‘everyday’ stuff once upon a time in our country?

But the concern here is with the mundane - the state of our higher education: its monstrous capacity to turn gold into straw; its ability to create all round debility and promote mediocrity.  Joseph Heller had said:  Some are born mediocre; some achieve mediocrity and some have mediocrity thrust on them.  In the case of our present generation graduates, it is the last part of the axiom that holds true.  

A bit of a flashback: Once upon a time there was no NET (the National Eligibility Test for college teachers). In those good old days, people with a Master’s could go and teach in colleges. But in those days, it was not easy to get a Masters.  A lot of bright students failed to clear the cut-off mark. Right from matriculation, the filtering was rigorous, and every exam produced as many martyrs as winners.  But there was little doubt about the merits of those that won. Their mastery was not something merely marked on certificates; they knew their trade. True:  A Masters holder in English in those days was not wise enough to read CHAMPAGNE as “Chem-paaa-gi-ni”, nor capable of producing a sentence like “on the age of 58 my fader retarded from his guvnment gob and becom a employee with praiwate firm undil one of his leg become damaged goods;” a history  graduate in those days lacked such basic knowledge like ‘Robert Clive defeated Mughal Emperor Akbar and became the first English king of India’ nor did they know the incontrovertible fact that  ‘Mahatma Gandhi was not only the father of the nation but also the grand grand father of our Rahul Gandhi.’ Apart from such minor issues, those graduates had true stamina and could be counted on to ply their trade.  

Things changed first slow and then by sudden degrees.  Governments and universities introduced liberal valuations, moderations, grace marks (that included marks for NSS, NCC, Scout and everything other than studies), bonus marks and bumper marks.  In olden times, it was difficult to pass the matriculation;  then it became difficult to fail in the same and eventually it became almost impossible if not absolutely so.  The universities too followed suit. There was a time in Kerala when nearly seventy percent of the students appearing for their pre-degree exams simply failed to clear the hurdle. I, for one, belonged to a fortunate batch in the first college in India to be ranked with double A plus by UGC. And in that year of bumper harvest, the institution’s pass percentage was 66.

Then they dismantled the PDC and introduced Plus Two, again making it difficult for students to fail the exams.  While the PDC students had a great amount of maturity interacting with university level graduates and being taught by tutors teaching advanced students, the plus-two kids find themselves unable to shake off their blue diaper syndromes. They come with donkey loads of marks but with pretty little know-how.  Probably the system is not to be blamed for all their ills: indeed, the over-exposure to electronic media and the general kitsch that has infected our times are taking their toll on them.  Recent studies have uncovered precious facts about how our smarter phones and other digital contraptions are successfully creating an ever dumber generation.

I shall come to the point: When universities mushroomed like hell and degrees began to be offered like over-the-counter drugs, eligibility tests were made mandatory. Thus the UGC swung into action and introduced National Eligibility Tests for university teachers.  In the beginning, the exams were rigorous, based as they were on objective and subjective questions, that tested the candidates’ analytical and critical skills.  No one felt the pinch of the times more than aided college managers in Kerala.  For these worthy purveyors of learning, hiring teachers was a profitable enterprise. Once UGC tightened the screws on the teacher eligibility in the early nineties, college managers felt the pinch.  Then happened the deluge. UGC watered down its criteria.  The old rigorous tests gave way to objective type tests with no negative marks making NET a nitwit’s job. (The aided college managers once again had their devil’s cauldrons boiling.  A college teacher’s vacancy is auctioned off for anything in the region of half a crore rupees in Kerala now!!!)

The issue here is the total unreliability of objective tests.  A friend of mine had the distinct ‘mis/fortune’ of appearing for TET exam designed for primary teachers.  He had his application form filled at a net-cafe where instead of Malayalam, the Tamil column was inadvertently ticked. The guy, who knows not a letter of Tamil, took things in his stride.  Undaunted, he appeared for the exam and scored a near pass mark in Tamil.  If a person who knows not a single letter can score nearly thirty marks in an exam, that exam is not worth being called one.  The fact is: objective tests are objective-defying tests that lead to the cumulative corrosion of our educational system.

Over the years, I have met people with NET and JRF in English who cannot produce a single error-free sentence.  I recently came across a blog awash with congratulatory messages from candidates to the teacher whose dedicated work helped them clear NET in English. To my horror, most of those messages were riddled with mistakes.  If these guys become future English teachers, one can only say: God save the Queen and her language!!!  They are able to do with English what even Shakespeare’s Caliban couldn’t distantly fathom.

 Not that all NET and JRF candidates aren’t meritorious.  There are indeed meritorious ones but a lot of mediocre ones manage to crawl through the NET thanks to the objective pattern which is after all a matter of lottery, and hence mockery. Equally true is the fact that many meritorious ones fail to clear the hurdle because wild guessing/mugging up sterile facts is not their forte.

Language and literature are skills, like swimming or martial arts. Knowledge plays a part in this skill but only a part.  A more crucial role is that of analytical and marshalling skills. Without such skills, a language trainer will be like a Karate instructor unable to throw a punch or deliver a kick, despite his encyclopaedic mastery of the history of martial arts or an infallible ability to recall the exact date of Bruce Lee’s death. Imagine a swimming instructor of the same mould and you have the mirror image of the present breed of language teachers with NET.

What is urgently needed is the introduction of analytical and subjective questions for qualification tests to save the quality of higher education, busy plumbing new depths of mediocrity. Of course, we may very well expect the authorities in Delhi to take note of this. For, they sure have learnt the following lesson well: “Destroying any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or long-range missiles; it only requires lowering the quality of education and allowing cheating in the examination by the students.”

Sure, no irony intended here; otherwise who would guarantee that I too, though not even a minor celebrity, won’t end up with a one-way ticket to moon of all goddamn places!!!!

(Umer O Thasneem teaches English at Calicut University. His recent book Orhan Pamuk and the Poetics of Fiction has been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK. The views expressed here are personal. He can be contacted at outcry2020@gmail.com)