Louis I. Kahn once said; “I revere learning because it is a fundamental inspiration. It isn’t just something which has to do with duty; it is born into us. The will to learn, the desire to learn, is one of the greatest of inspirations. I am not impressed by education. Learning, yes; education is something which is always on trial because no system can ever capture the real meaning of learning” (Latour, A. 1991)
I wonder whether Louis Kahn saw it coming; a day where a capital driven model takes over all forms of education from the cradle to that of the higher education institutes? Some say there’s no point in whining about these things and they say; ‘when the river water encounters a rock, it flows around it unhindered… and that we should be like that”. There’s some fundamental beauty and ugliness in this statement. For now let’s leave it at that.
We often look at the past in order to understand the present. We do not to hold the present at ransom to the workings of the past but as an attempt to figure-out the possible trends that might mould the future. This is a simple notion.
Within ‘Learning’ environments, we often find the ‘Teachers’ (we have to review this word later) sitting and waiting for the ‘students’ to arrive. This is not a philosophical statement but a simple observation. In Schools, institutes and even in the universities, this has become commonplace. Somehow, the students seem to be under the impression that the ‘Teachers’ are obliged to ‘teach’ them ‘whenever they chose to learn’…! This situation is most evident and problematic in universities. There can be a scientific evaluation of students’ punctuality and attendance although it’s rarely done.
This situation is probably a result of education being free and funded by the taxpayers of the country. For teachers, whether they ‘teach’ or not, it will not matter much as they will get paid despite students’ performance. But the nation as a whole is not that fortunate. It will suffer when what it invests in education is not later turned in to valuable capital.
In simpler terms, university students are provided with ‘free’ education now, with the expectation that they will effectively contribute to the prosperity of the nation in the future.
In reality this is far from the truth. You can be the judge of that.
What sucks is how a small number of students are able to actively ‘control’ the lives of others within the system. This minority is mostly driven by blind faith in some senior student with ulterior motives and this minority can cull progress in their peers by trying to propagate a mode of ‘homogenization’ in all spheres within the learning environment.
This homogenization is not a new concept. Its’ roots are at the heart of the socialist thinking where they try to drive some kind of an ‘everybody should be the equal’ philosophy that hardly allows for individual expression that seemed to contravene the grand ideology. Here ‘the group’ is considered paramount and everything should fall within the wish of the group. Anyone who is trying to rise up above the group or trying to be different will not be tolerated. This is the unspoken truth.
(This reminds me of the sad state in most of our villages where one person finds it hard to handle to progress of the neighbour. Where this happens, the person in question sometimes goes out of his way to curtail the progress of the other by mudslinging or even carrying out worse acts borne out of jealousy and envy. In addition to jealousy and envy, inferiority complex appears to play a major part in some students’ engagement with the peers.)
Self appointed representative and leaders within the group will regulate this ideology and above them you will find the seniors with vested interests. For the seniors this may be a part of some grand plan or mere power play, because they believe it’s their ‘right’ to decide the fate of the junior students.
The ‘leaders’ within the system, are often too stupid and blinded by the bad faith and don’t seem to mind the self destruction they are causing to themselves. Those at the receiving end for one reason or other seem to succumb to their fate without a fight. This majority can be divided into two sub-groups. The first sub-group is a smaller number of ‘bright students’. The remainder is in the mid level of academic competence. Within this second sub-group you often find students who are genuinely interested in their studies but require a great deal of guidance from the tutors and lecturers.
It is this second sub-group that looses out most due to the action of the ‘controlling’ offenders. This sub-group is normally a mix of students majorly from middle and lower middle class background and often from outstation schools. It is this group that should be making the most of the free education system and try to rise above their ranks in the future. Sadly though it is this same group who seems to be painfully silent and appear unaware of what their peers are doing to them.
Most of the culprits don’t seem to know of a world beyond the batch or the university. For some, becoming a ‘student leader’ or a ‘rep’ (Representative) amounts to a major achievement in life and this makes them assume a lot of authority and power to harass others. It is most unfortunate that these students are operating with a kind of ‘vengeance’ towards the others and are dwelling deeper into the inferiority complex that is evident in most of them. It is also certain that these students will not achieve much in the future nor fulfill the aspirations of the nation.
The homogenization plan works at different levels; symbolically and psychologically. The symbolic plan is mainly perpetuated by clothing and the physical appearance. The latter is mostly evident among the male students. Most of them grow hair in a particular manner and sometimes growing beards too. The males often wear rubber slippers (flip-flops) even when they venture out of the university without any consideration of the reputation of the institute that they represent.
Identical T-shirts that are sold to students are worn by both males and females that extend this iconography. This ‘dress code’ works almost like a uniform and ever so often when the students venture out of university they all wear the same t-shirt although there are different types of T-shirts among circulation. This cannot happen by accident.
The psychological threat begins with assigning ‘alias’ to all the junior students by the seniors. This is followed by pressurizing everyone to literally abandon their real names and to get known by their aliases. This concept goes to the heart of subversive or far right organizations (JVP) and terrorists organizations such as the LTTE. There are some well known examples such as Podi Athula, Loku Athula, (former JVP), Karuna, Pillayan (ex LTTE), Mahaththaya, Daya Master etc,. Often these aliases go beyond university years and sometimes sends real names of the students in to complete extinction.
Another psychological tact is to preach to the juniors extensively by a selected few ‘seniors’ or ‘leaders’ about how ‘weak’ they are as individuals and how ‘it is impossible to complete the course successfully without the help of the seniors’ (as the lecturers do not do the needful nor are interested in them), and because of the ‘language problem’ (lack of English knowledge) that they will anyway lag behind the ‘Colombo crowd’ and only the seniors can find them employment in the future and so on. This mantra is preached over and over and over until the students start to doubt their personal achievements and capabilities and begin to develop a great psychological dependence on the seniors and the leaders. This phenomenon often drives many students capable at entry, into complete ‘self doubt’ or ‘resignation’ if they don’t buy in to this preaching. This happens due to the critical mass that the seniors and the leaders create within the group that appears all powerful over any individual strength or trait.
In short, originally smart students ‘resign’ or go into self imposed ‘withdrawal’ and originally not so smart ones’ in to ‘powerless’ and totally dependent on others for their day to day survival and academic advancement. The preaching often covers basic needs of a student, like food and shelter as universities are often unable to provide good quality accommodation and food for all the needy students. The sermons are littered with references to how ‘we are all a tightly knit family’ and how ‘we will look after each other in times of great need’ that ‘all of you will be protected by the family as long as you are among them’ etc,. At the small group or individual level, the ‘leaders’ identify students who are most likely to be a threat to their ‘system’ and carefully manipulate well orchestrated situations into driving wedges between those students and even between students and the academic staff.
The culprits also, carefully get around the support-staff of the respective faculties and departments by addressing them, ‘aiya’ and ‘akka’ (‘elder brother’ and ‘elder sister) despite any disparity and carefully exploit thus formed relationships to manipulate deadlines, postpone submissions and even to get inside information about the workings within the academic staff and the departments. Often these students render small favours to the support staff and buy their loyalty and support. They also gather information that might be useful to them about the past and about individual lecturers and the departments.
Evidence of research or scrutiny about the above discussed workings within the university system is not known. There has not been a critical discourse or an effective public debate about the ‘real worth’ of the university graduates in terms of their contribution to national development. What can be clearly seen is when you observe closely (within some universities and within certain departments) that the tentacles of ugliness in metamorphic nature slowly spreading into individual psyche and creative mental space where the individual is completely deconstructed in to powerless entity and replaced by a highly inter-depended timid mass, carefully manipulated by a few.
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