‘Colleges should encourage creativity’

During a recent lecturing assignment in a lush green college in Mumbai, a student showed me the library card of a book. A library card of a book essentially tells us how many times the book has been borrowed. The book in question is a classic – Lebanese writer Khalil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’. It was published in 1923 and has been translated into more than 40 languages. The library card informed me that Gibran’s book was first borrowed from the library in 1970 and since then has been borrowed thrice, only. The most recent borrower was the aforementioned student who loved its contents. She is not an avid reader (except for a few popular books) but would recommend the book to her classmates. The classmates though, as I subsequently learned, do not have a library card. Those who do use it to get reference books to Xerox pages from them, and use the contents of those pages to fill their examination answer sheets. There is no love for the library or for its books.

One would argue that the students are to blame; one would be tempted to bring in student culture into the equation and compose an impressive soliloquy! However, the students are not to blame. It’s the exam system itself that encourages them to mug up and write without reflection. The answers are unimaginative – and this is what is asked of them. They are told not to write too fancy to make it simpler for the examiner to understand. All in all, there is no need for them to visit the library for pleasure, or even for serious education. Recently, I was told by several students of a media class to teach them ‘practical stuff’. “For the exams we will write from a set of notes itself. Can you tell us something more useful?” The student in question is not known for attendance or general seriousness, but attended many of the lectures and researched on the topics discussed. For instance, his research on the ‘fourth wall’ led him to refer to soliloquies and asides. For your benefit, the fourth wall in art implies that the performer in a play or a film will not speak to the audience directly. The performer and the performance will honour the imaginary wall, and behave as if living a reality. For more on it you can research like the inspired student. None of this information would come handy for the examination paper though, which simply requires the students to prepare from a question bank and write the answers plainly, without too much creativity. This is true for the semi professional graduation course in media as well as for the literature course.

Furthermore, almost all the answers are available on the internet. For instance, one can type ‘Anglo American formalism’ in Google and use the first few links as notes (from Brittanica. com no less!). Similarly, one doesn’t have to read the book ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to write about it in the paper. One can refer the notes and summaries on the internet and get marks without reading a page of the book. Which explains why those library cards are redundant. Which also explains why students don’t attend lectures regularly. If everything’s there on the web, and if one is required to copy and paste, then why have the teacher at all?

And even teachers realize this. Some of them purely dictate notes in class, and repeat the process year after year, ridding themselves of any hassle to be creative. One of them told me that it’s also because the teachers are burdened with administrative duties (like filling endless forms) that take away from their preparatory time. Additionally, the pay is not inspiring enough to encourage creativity. A senior teacher from a popular suburban college told me that teaching is a thankless job. There’s no point in making that much effort. The students come simply because 75 % attendance is compulsory. And they’ll write as per the requirement of the question paper. She’s not wrong. I asked a group of examiners, who were in the process of checking answer papers, their views on the answers. They claimed that many wrote the ‘same stuff’ – either from the dictated class notes or the internet. A few make efforts to be a little creative. Creativity is neither needed, nor encouraged. Furthermore, I was amazed at their paper checking speed. They were super fast, because they are used to the answers (as I was told). A student brought light to this entire system, thus– I would write better but the examiners’ speed will be affected. So I am doing them a favour and saving myself the trouble too. He was being sarcastic, but he is not wrong.