DU Vice Chancellor invites teachers to speak, silences them // VC walks out of Academic Council meeting
NEW DELHI: It was as if the match had been fixed and the result was a foregone conclusion. Delhi University's vice-chancellor, Dinesh Singh, tried to justify the foundation courses, but in his speech to a gathering of teachers on Wednesday, he didn't touch upon any of the issues raised by them. He simply brushed them aside as an attempt to malign an "innovative initiative".
Some teachers who attended the meeting described the entire exercise as eyewash. While Singh spoke for over an hour, he allowed just about 10 minutes for teachers to put their point of view across. Interestingly, those whose names were announced had nothing critical to say about either the foundation courses or the four-year-undergraduate programme. And not a single teacher who was critical of the compulsory foundation courses and had given his or her name in advance was allowed to speak.
As usual, the V-C's speech was built around quotes from Dinkar, Iqbal and Gandhi, interspersed with rhetoric and jokes which apparently are doing the rounds in social media. In this hour-long speech, while touching upon the allegations of errors and "laughable activities" prescribed in the foundation courses, the mathematician V-C observed: "I am yet to come across a single book on mathematics written by great mathematicians which does not have errors."
Singh started his address with the now well-known claim that "we have been consistently meeting our colleagues in smaller and large groups. We are here to discuss a little bit the foundation courses. I want to reassure you, DU will continue to strive for the betterment of teachers and the teachers' interest will never be harmed in anyway..."
While Singh's speech didn't deal with any specific problems with the courses or the structure, he said the premise of these courses was to connect students with real-life situations. "We are bringing in these things which are time-tested, in our country, for decades and centuries. We must not forget the value of these knowledge systems... We want the child to get acquainted with the challenges of India and also learn the practices of the past."
Students from IP, Hindu and Miranda House were connected via video conferencing, where Singh, to demonstrate how the foundation courses were being implemented, asked the students: 'How do you identify a city as opposed to a village? If we have to send a rocket to the moon, should we point it at the moon and fire it?"
After the speech, the dean of academic activities and projects, Malashri Lal, announced the names of seven teachers for questions and feedback. After the event got over, a few teachers accosted the VC and publicly accused him of not considering all points of view and only the ones that suited him.
A meeting of Delhi University's Academic Council came to a dramatic end, with a majority of the elected teachers' representatives opposing amendment of the ordinance for teachers' appointment as it would be "anti-teacher". Vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh stood up in between the discussion on the screening process for appointment of teachers, and asked the members to either approve or reject the amendments.
"It is sheer blackmail. The AC meetings are known to debate issues for hours. But the VC simply walked out saying either we pass the proposals or reject them. We were discussing the screening process at that time. The DU administration wants to shortlist the eligible candidates before calling them for an interview. Our suggestion was to call all the eligible candidates for the interview," said AC member, Amitava Chakraborty.
The council passed the resolutions approving the changes for teachers' appointment with 20 of the 26 elected representatives dissenting. Earlier in the day the council approved the proposal for modifying the evaluation process of foundation courses, giving more weight to checking at college level. Now, out of 75 marks, colleges will evaluate 55 marks and the remaining 20 will be the university's responsibility. AC members said the proposal was not part of the agenda list circulated among them, but was presented as a supplementary item by the university administration.
The approved proposals are to be tabled at the executive council meeting on Saturday. EC member Abha D Habib said, "While concerns were being raised, the VC left the meeting, declaring the entire agenda as passed even before the house could go through the draft amendments on CAS. This cannot be rushed as it has implications for thousands of teachers and the academic environment. We condemn the VC for this."
Critics of the foundation courses are saying the university is trying to pass the buck on to college teachers after making a hash of the courses and this is bound to undermine the value of DU degrees. "Our predictions came true even in the semester system. The university exam branch cannot evaluate such a large number of papers simultaneously. By passing the responsibility on to the colleges, you are destroying a common minimum standard which is ensured in case of centralized evaluation. We have been saying that the course and not the college is important. But now the emphasis will shift to the college. This will impact the worth of the course, which will end up being governed by market forces," said Sanam Khanna, an English teacher at Kamala Nehru College.
"It is sheer blackmail. The AC meetings are known to debate issues for hours. But the VC simply walked out saying either we pass the proposals or reject them. We were discussing the screening process at that time. The DU administration wants to shortlist the eligible candidates before calling them for an interview. Our suggestion was to call all the eligible candidates for the interview," said AC member, Amitava Chakraborty.
The council passed the resolutions approving the changes for teachers' appointment with 20 of the 26 elected representatives dissenting. Earlier in the day the council approved the proposal for modifying the evaluation process of foundation courses, giving more weight to checking at college level. Now, out of 75 marks, colleges will evaluate 55 marks and the remaining 20 will be the university's responsibility. AC members said the proposal was not part of the agenda list circulated among them, but was presented as a supplementary item by the university administration.
The approved proposals are to be tabled at the executive council meeting on Saturday. EC member Abha D Habib said, "While concerns were being raised, the VC left the meeting, declaring the entire agenda as passed even before the house could go through the draft amendments on CAS. This cannot be rushed as it has implications for thousands of teachers and the academic environment. We condemn the VC for this."
Critics of the foundation courses are saying the university is trying to pass the buck on to college teachers after making a hash of the courses and this is bound to undermine the value of DU degrees. "Our predictions came true even in the semester system. The university exam branch cannot evaluate such a large number of papers simultaneously. By passing the responsibility on to the colleges, you are destroying a common minimum standard which is ensured in case of centralized evaluation. We have been saying that the course and not the college is important. But now the emphasis will shift to the college. This will impact the worth of the course, which will end up being governed by market forces," said Sanam Khanna, an English teacher at Kamala Nehru College.
