IL&FS Focus

Facilitators not monarchsBrendon MacCarthaighAt the moment of writingI am seething. A counselling client of mine has recently been suffering severe, indeed life-threatening, pressure on the home front, physical abuse included. It was hard for her to work up enough interest to enroll for her M.Com, but she drew on inner reserves and set off for Paper One this week.One of her responses to stress is to hum. So, when the papers were distributed and she saw that she knew precious little of what it was about, she began to hum. Hardly noticeable in a hall full of murmuring students helping one another sotto voce. The supervisor asked her to stop? No. The supervisor ordered her, loudly, to leave the hall ‚ no warning whatever. She was about the only one not consulting anyone else at the time. Now having battled so hard just to face this ordeal, the girl almost caved in but with a mighty effort pleaded for mitigation of sentence. Lord High Supervisor graciously granted her a mere half-hour rustication ‚ but took time off to upbraid her for being without culture, uncouth, having actually, horror of horrors, crossed her saree-clad knees while reading the question paper. Finally, with ten minutes still to go, he pestered her again and again, to tie up her papers and check them in. She held her nerve, and her paper, and forced herself to keep writing. She phoned me last night to report this dreadful experience, and we both agreed that in practical terms little can be done. This is a graphic illustration of a universally denied truth: teaching is a power game. And supervising exams is an extension of it.It doesn‚t take long for a teacher to learn that the students are totally dependent on her/ him. She has the knowledge, the knowledge they must have if they are to move up the academic ladder. And lest they think that they can acquire that knowledge via texts or tutors, the teacher is the corrector, and allots the marks/ grades. When parents visit a school, they treat the teacher like royalty, scared lest any word of theirs imperil their child. This is an irresistible and intoxicating situation. Monarch of all they survey indeed. I must admit that for several years I enjoyed the teacher-is-monarch experience. Until I began to notice the faces of my students around examinations time, then the stories of sickness, the feverish kids insisting on doing exams even in class II, the fierce tension of parents ‚ the whole mountain of health-threatening symptoms that accompanied every exam the children were writing. This recurring phenomenon prompted me to reappraise and seriously question my role as a teacher. I became aware of how intolerant I was when supervising exams. Yes, the youngsters would copy and cheat at the drop of an eraser, but it never struck me then how desperate they were to pass. Desperate to the point of ‚ well yes, suicide. In this contribution I don‚t intend to explain…