M A I L B A G

Education in doldrums

One generation past, my British research guide talked about “Deschooling Society” by Ivan Illich. The book rejected the prevalent education system because it had ignored the child. That time, these were radical views. Today we find the current Indian education system too is in the doldrums.

The education system is distorted but in a different way. Right from pre-nursery to the +2 level, our curricula are tilted towards entrance tests. The aberration is evident in the student’s weak skills of language and mathematics. Further, student activity is a passe. For example, the Hoshangabad science project has been scrapped. One reason is that the curricula subscribes to the needs of status schools/colleges or discipline of studies. Hence, the syllabi are extra loaded.

Boards fix the curricula. But the methods of teaching are left to the whims of teachers or private coaches. They teach in a way which enables the child to join the next higher level. Child/adolescent psychology and norms of development are relegated. Curricular activities — extra or intra class — like gardening, craft, community hygiene, which help develop scientific thinking and foster the values of love, cooperation and truth, are sadly neglected.

Incidentally, this affects the availability of skilled services in industry. Why cry? This is the house which Jack built. The curricular planners lacked the philosophy of education and the right perspective. Parents are bewildered. The teachers are rudderless. Students are at the crossroads. They are exposed to the market forces. Counselling is non-existent in schools. What is the remedy?

Surjeet Singh, Mohali

Wage & performance

The response of Mr Arvind (Jan 14) to Prof Sucha Singh’s article on the ongoing controversy regarding the incorporation of contractual service arrangements for teachers in Indian universities seems to be inherently inconsistant. On the one hand, he is apparently deriding at the performance appraisal practices adopted by the peer teams in evaluating the performance of academic institutions such as universities, while on the other, in the same breath he is professing the need to “link wage to performance” of teachers and researchers as if with the given inadequacies of the system, the teachers’ performance appraisal would be unbiased and objective.

Performance evaluation, as a matter of fact, is an extremely delicate and a solemn task which requires a high degree of uprightness, integrity and ingenuity on the part of the assessor. The assessor should be able to accredit a performance without any extraneous influences and must ardently adhere to the stipulated norms while evaluating. But as implicitly admitted by Mr Arvind himself, such above-board evaluation has remained elusive in our academic realm. Then how will a researcher’s performance be truly assessed so as to determine his reward? If the conmen in academics and research are able to pass their mediocre or trivial work as quality work, e.g. through manipulation getting a substandard doctoral work approved, or getting a plagiarised piece published in a journal, and by influencing or appeasing the whims of the “sagacious” peers, then who will scrupulously sift the standard from the substandard work as a measure of good performance?

Linking wage with performance is a paradigm of the perfectly mechanistic labour markets where rewards are truly commensurate with the quality of labour input. But in a set-up like ours, where the job markets neither provide any security or job satisfaction nor performances are accurately gauged and perceived, and are flooded with mediocre pedagogic stuff, linking wages with performance or any kind of contractual service arrangement for warranting the continuity of a university teacher’s or a researcher’s incumbency would be akin to pushing him to the perils of uncertainty and injustice.

Dr Vikram Chadha, GND University, Amritsar

PU pension

Every few days there are rumblings, dharnas and agitations by the employees of Panjab University. If they have any decency or conscience at all, let them come out with facts which prompted them to sabotage the scheme which had been granted by an earlier government. Some vested political aspirants, who made a fool of them for personal interests, had taken these people for a ride. Now with what face are they asking for pension with a certain cut off date? What is the sanctity or the rationale of a cut off date, and a particular date at that?

What is the fault of old retired employees, many of them Senior Citizens, that they were born earlier, hence retired earlier. It is rather they who need a deserve pension more than the present lot, and greater pension in fact. Because the earlier an employee retires, he or she does so at a lower salary, and therefore, lesser Provident Fund and lesser savings. If a cut-off date is, in fact, desirable it should be such that those who retired before a particular date are granted pension. Those who retire after that date may not be given a pension, as they have been and are getting fat salaries, allowances, and have substantial savings commensurate with all that. This way the expenditure and liability of the government will also be minimal.

Prof Joginder Kaur Virk, Chandigarh

A bumpy road

The Garhshankar-Nawanshahr road provides a highly suitable access for patients referred to DMC or CMC, Ludhiana, from the adjoining areas of Mahilpur, Nangal and Anandpur Sahib. On this road a 7-8 km stretch is highly bumpy, hazardous and accident-prone, especially for patient-carrying vehicles. At this crucial juncture every moment is precious for patients fighting for life. The road is in such a deteriorated condition that even a bicycle cannot be paddled properly.

Manjeet Singh, Rurki Khas Hoshiarpur

Commerce teachers

The DPI (Punjab) has invited applications from highly qualified government primary teachers for promoting them as TGTs. But the future of B.Com/ M.Com teachers working as primary teachers for the past so many years still remains uncertain. In 2001 similar applications were invited and the process ended up with the promotion of all BA/MA teachers into TGTs grades, barring B.Com/M.Com teachers.

Why this step-motherly treatment with only commerce teachers?

Rajesh Sharma, Jalandhar