As Kota suicides rise, Outlook spoke with Avijit Pathak, a former professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi, to understand what it means to live in an age of quantification; a fetish for numbers. Pathak's works on pedagogy had a huge impact on different disciplines.
Yet another 16-year-old student, preparing for NEET (Medical), died by suicide in Kota, taking the death toll to 24, the highest ever, this year. A spate of suicides in India’s ‘coaching hub’ has put the focus back on several factors that must be responsible for making up an ‘educational’ environment that deals with nearly 2.5 lakhs of children and teenagers every year.
While discussions around mental health have once again opened up the gates for demanding a better solidarity network for students to cope with stress, there lies a multitude of underlying mechanisms that have built a system of ‘rock learning’ and emphasises an ‘end’ without much focus on the ‘means’ ( the journey, one may say).
When Outlook visited Kota, it observed how gruelling schedules have locked students up in their rooms with walls only showing formulas, how a lack of social activities and social circles, unknowingly take a toll on their coping mechanisms, and how education here has become so one-dimensional.
In this context, to rightly critique the system, Outlook spoke with Avijit Pathak, a former professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi, to understand what it means to live in an age of quantification; a fetish for numbers. Pathak's works on pedagogy had huge impact on different disciplines
1. Whatever it takes, IIT/Medical has to be the end. Why does this race-learning system lack any value for the ‘means’? Why and how does our education system condition us to feel a sense of achievement only if we have an identity like ‘IIT/Doctor’ to wear?
The chronic obsession with medical/engineering, or the act of reducing education into the market-driven mythologies of ‘placements and salary packages’ has corrupted the vision of the anxiety-ridden/ insecure middle class in search of upward social mobility. No wonder, we are destroying young minds; we are killing great possibilities. Possibly, one who could have become a good historian or a sensitive cultural anthropologist or a skilled football player is forced to believe that nothing matters more in life than the technical strategy (provided by coaching centre ‘gurus’ and their ‘knowledge capsules’) needed for cracking all sorts of life-negating standardized tests for getting admissions into medical/engineering colleges. It seems these parents refuse to accept that each child is unique with distinctive orientations and aptitudes. This diversity is normal and natural. However, we impose an oppressive discourse of homogeneity on these tender/vulnerable young minds. How absurd—everybody must become a ‘computer engineer’ or a doctor; everybody ought to internalize the mantra of Physics-Chemistry-Mathematics-Biology; everybody ought to accept that not becoming a doctor/engineer is a sign of failure! This is nothing but psychic/cultural/symbolic/ physical violence.
Kota is nothing but a site of violence.
2. Faculty members in Kota seem to still believe in the idea of success through ‘numbers’. The world has advanced, atleast I would want to believe so, but where is the lack that still makes the top-tier teachers believe in this?
We live in the age of quantification—the fetish of numbers. It seems we devalue what refuses to be measured or quantified; we are uncomfortable with qualitative experiences. Think of a situation. A young student loves Physics; she keeps reflecting on the meaning of the paradigm shift that Physics has gone through—say, from Newtonian physics to Einstein’s theory of relativity. However, she is uncomfortable with the MCQ-centric standardized tests and doesn’t have a good score. The system will call her a ‘failure’. Or, you love Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot; but, your score in the CBSE English paper is not satisfactory because you have not mastered the strategy of writing your answers through standardized two points or four points. So the CBSE will say that your English is bad. This is madness. And what else can these coaching centre strategists think? Their lucrative business depends on this fetish of numbers. Reduce the learning experience into tests and scores; deprive young learners of the real faculties of learning—joy, wonder, curiosity, meditative thinking, and reflection. Make them ‘warriors’ reading guidebooks, or ‘success manuals’ provided by fancy coaching shops, and learn the mechanical strategy of ticking ‘correct’ answers in the OMR sheet! Ironically, this is what we regard as education. What a fall!
3. Besides, gauging the situation in Kota, one can say that there is absolutely zero learning or emphasis given on liberal arts or anything, that has nothing to do with numbers. For students, who are as young as 15-16 and although they have chosen a stream of ‘numbers’ for them, do you think, missing out on a complimentary stream of arts subjects adds to the burden of students?
When education becomes one-dimensional, it kills what the market regards as ‘non-productive’—say, poetry, literature, philosophy, aesthetics or history. It is sad that most of our children are growing up without great books—say a novel by Munshi Premchand, a poem by Kamala Das, or a story by Rabindranath Tagore. Imagine their fatigue and anxiety. Schools, coaching centres, private tutors, weekly/monthly/mock tests, and constant reminders: IIT/Medical is the only road to salvation! There is no sunrise, no sunset; no flower blooms for them. There is no Bismilla Khan; there is no Leonardo. Instead, only guidebooks, success manuals and instructions by exam strategists! By the time some of them manage to join IITS/medical colleges, they are already finished.
4. Last, how much do you think the “branding” of “top” universities does more harm to a student’s psyche than help him? Does the “premium education” add to any better development?
This sort of ‘branding’ is the result of a neoliberal assault on education. When the logic of market fundamentalism invades the realm of education, everything becomes a ‘product’. A teacher is a ‘brand’; an educational institution is a ‘brand’. In the age of consumerism, we love and buy ‘brands’. We do not drink coffee; we drink ‘Starbucks’! Likewise, we do not study Physics; we study FITT JEE physics! The system has turned everybody into consumers in search of ‘brands’. And it has led to terrible anxiety. If you don’t have the money or other resources to buy and consume the fancy ‘brand’, you see yourself as a loser.
5. What is your opinion on MCQ learning rather than descriptive?
The MCQ obsession, or the MCQ-centric standardized tests, I have no hesitation in saying, is a conspiracy against life-affirming/meaningful education, the spirit of critical pedagogy, and self-reflexivity. It destroys analytical/argumentative thoughts; it kills subjective/qualitative articulations; it simplifies an otherwise nuanced/complex reality. Take a simple illustration. Did Karl Marx plead for economic determinism? There is no simple, one and only one correct answer to this question. Because both the trends—determinism as well as voluntarism—were present in Marx. Children need creative imagination, sensitivity to plurality of interpretations, and the ability to think and reflect. It is sad that in the name of instant elimination, the education machinery has popularized highly problematic MCQ-centric tests.