Sunday, May 13, 2007

The Sycophant Circle

What has the classroom become like?

Simply put, it has become a venting machine of sorts for them to come and puke out their frustrations and inaccomplishments. They call this teaching...

The process boils up to be a personal vendetta table, where you cross each name which begs to differ. It's an opinionated hierarchy. But mind you- the opinions can arise only from one side of the room, any idea arising from a bench- however genuine it may be cannot hold grounds against the table on which the attendance sheet lies...

There's no space for discussions, arguments, there's no space for a difference of opinion. Often the teacher will go round and round a topic, criticising students for their answers till he himself produces his 'right stream of thought'. Was all the prodding merely an exercise of ego-satisfaction? An exercise in which students are tended like a flock of sheep, expected to walk on pre-decided terrains and think only on those lines which the professor thinks right? Today, education has become more or less a passive exercise- questions are not entertained, unless they are the sort of questions which the teacher can answer...

And then there's this Sycophant Circle...

It's a gathering of ambitious wannabe intellectuals who have just about started preening their down feathers and dream big to fly the same dictatorial regimes like their well-chosen idols...

Classrooms have turned into the battlegrounds of bureaucracy, the centre of attention of any educational institution is invariably a dingy canteen, the centre of affection the canteen staff, which doesn't feign hypocrisy while providing low quality food for high rates. They cheat with a sense of open dignity. That's why they win our affection.

Education?! It's cheating all the way through under the mask of pseudo intellectualism...