Of Teachers and Registers!

Who hasn’t been tormented by the arduous attendance business at school! Teachers still begin their day by taking the infamous roll call followed by countless ‘yessirs’ or ‘present mams’ reverberating in the classrooms. No one ever protested even when asked to stand outside the class for being a latecomer and monitors walking by with a tell-all smile. Today when members of the same fraternity, albeit at a higher level resist recording their own attendance and become the subject of a deriding edit in a major national daily (HT, Oct. 4), it is time to ponder over the issue.

I remember attending a UGC-sponsored conference on Post-war literature in Chandigarh where a clerk used to walk in to make us record our attendance on a piece of paper. This entitled about a dozen of us to our meagre dearness allowance and measly meals. Though we signed the slip without a murmur, the British professor found the exercise in the middle of the session quite irksome and repeatedly asked if it was really necessary.

No one ever imagined that teachers of a premier university would ever play truant or do less than what was expected of them. In fact to guard against over-burdening them, it was one profession where the maximum, not the minimum, work-load was prescribed. ‘No teachers will be given more than eighteen periods a week’, the rule mentioned. In a similar strain, teachers were not expected to record their presence but were assumed to be present unless on leave. In the same spirit, most teachers remained accessible and went out of the way to turn institutions into centres of excellence. Luckily many still do.

With expansion, attitudes also gradually changed. The standards began to be diluted. I still remember some of my junior colleagues protesting why we need to come every day or apply for leave when one or the other member was spotted only rarely in college and got away with it. The principal did try once in a while to reason with the offenders but were silenced by angry denials. The disease spread over time. One of the jokes doing rounds in staff rooms now is that one should no longer ask about the ‘Off day’ but the ‘working day’.

This is not to justify the contents of the edit. Much of it was false and frivolous. The average salary of a college teacher is less than half of what was quoted. Considering most of them are unable to enter the profession these days till they are in their late twenties or early thirties takes much of sheen off that figure. Most still continue to work for long, past their marriage and parenthood, teaching on ad-hoc or guest basis. In any case, it is not enough to ensure the presence of a teacher, essential though it is, but to create an atmosphere, which encourages him to deliver his best. This is only possible with fair selection followed by periodic assessment and rewards.

Accountability is a good argument. You can’t just go on saying ‘No’ to everything. No internal assessment marks, no admissions, no time tables, no new academic calendar, no exams in November, no semester system at UG level, no biometric system, no revision of courses, no centralised evaluation. In short, no work but all pay! But accountability is a two-way sword. Accountability is surely not limited to teachers signing an attendance register.

Let all of us on the campus, and let us begin at the top, ask ourselves whether we have acted fairly, diligently and delivered our best on the job. Perhaps the answer will not be very flattering!