CAN WE FLATTEN THE TEACHER-STUDENT HIERARCHY?

Information is history. Knowledge is the future.

It’s not just a turn of phrase. In real terms, information is to knowledge what data are to statistics. By itself, information does not yield anything (except unimaginatively set GK sections of competitive examinations, perhaps!). Besides, information is freely available today. Knowledge entails sifting that information to derive knowledge. That derivation is what we may term learning. An effective method to achieve this end at a higher level of education is research.

I am alluding to a concept of higher education which should entail independent learning. It is true that the “learning model” (as opposed to the passé “teaching model”) is the new catchphrase among educators all over the world, and yet, the interpretation of the term is often suspect. Independent learning can often be achieved outside of classroom education, but the kind of independence I am referring to here is as a constituent component of a mix of guided and individual thinking.

The Information Age has gifted us the power to be independent learners. With information at our fingertips and the technology of interactivity, e-learning has been promoted as the future of pedagogy. (The hyperbole must be excused, since technocrats often cannot help themselves.) Scholars like Dr. Kulandai Swamy have advocated the use of distance learning methods. Each of these methods points out to the fact the learner is now gaining more and more power — the power to use the information s/he has access to, mould it, hone it, develop it, implement it. Yet, does our educational environment provide us that platform?

When we learnt the alphabet, we practised it until we began applying it in all our communication. As we grew up, our education system assumed that as learners we would probably continue applying concepts into practice. At several levels, especially in humanities, social sciences and other such areas, we have largely failed to apply or innovate applications that emerge out of concepts. As a result, many of the applicable subjects, such as psychology, political science and literature, are not harnessed adequately in practice, in the face of a welter of opportunities that were created in the new industries — advertising, marketing, television content, news, etc.

Meanwhile, our obsession with technology and management thereof continues. In a developing country, construction of technical platforms is necessary. Regrettably, in this process, the so-called non-technical areas of study have been relegated to “non-application” subjects that are somehow irrelevant to the techno-world that we live in. Almost as a leveller, content providing has emerged as key to many electronic services such as instructional design and, of course, media. English and arts graduates are suddenly in demand, and even they are caught by surprise.

Slowly, but surely, we are developing a system of choice-based education. My prediction is that by 2010, with the emergence of needs for other areas engineering and technology-based subjects will no longer wield that hierarchical power that they have over the past 30-odd years of industrialization in our country. Since at last the pressures of employment will reduce for non-techies, career choice will be more and more on the basis of aptitude and interest. My hope is that this will be a first step towards the independence of learning which I alluded to earlier. Let us call this the Democratization of Learning.

This democratization will doubtless fuel a potential to create knowledge. No longer can teachers claim to be omniscient, since learning no longer entails mere transmission of information. Educational institutions must ensure the right platform for independence of thought and action by making information available readily. At some of the institutes here and increasingly in Western countries, coursework is made available in advance on a network, either an Intranet or over the Web, to postgraduate students.

By doing so, classrooms become not centres of one-way information dissemination but forums of discussion, thereby entailing the potential to move beyond information and creating new bodies of knowledge through application of information. A study I conducted recently used an informal comparison between a typical U.S. classroom at the postgraduate level and a typical Indian classroom, and revealed that two-way communication in a class greatly helps in individual and group learning process.

At the postgraduate level, most universities in Western countries use a circular class layout these days — a large table around which the faculty and students are seated. Since they typically do not admit more than 20-22 students in a class, university departments can afford to exploit this arrangement to several distinct advantages. A change towards this layout seems to be warranted in our higher education system because of the scope for a conceptual change in the way in-class communication is defined.

The table-chair layout offers the student a feeling of responsibility. The provision of a chair and a table is akin to a seminar hall, and has been observed to enhance a sense of accountability amongst students towards contributing to the subject under discussion — either through discussion or relevant, one-on-many conversations. Both teacher and student feel equally responsible to take the class forward. The evident and irritating phenomenon of “cross-talk”, where students indulge in private conversations while a class session is on, can be curbed. Cross-talk creates negative vibes in class, spreading the message that the class is not captivating enough. In a round-table format such indulgence is less likely, since the group is small and students face one another.

The round-table structure makes a student comfortable interacting with faculty and other students. The small, intimate atmosphere usually helps in breaking the ice with the faculty member and other students in a formal, yet open forum. It is this interaction, in fact, that many faculty members find lacking amongst students at higher learning levels. But often, the psychological barrier is the existence of a platform, standing-teacher-seated-students pattern. This sender-receiver model of communication has been frequently decried, since it denies a comfort zone between them. Both teacher and student find themselves duty-bound to be pigeonholed into talking and listening, respectively.

The layout helps the class in flattening communicative hierarchies between teacher and student. Traditionally, the society was divided into those who have information, and those who don’t. Today, in the age of freely available data, information is the least of our problems. Each of us, young or old, comes with a set of experiences and backgrounds. Therefore, such traditional hierarchies should no longer be valid. At a higher education level, therefore, students should expect, and be expected to, share information and use the class as a platform for better understanding of a subject, in order to further it.

These are important and, thankfully, unavoidable steps towards the democratization of education, but the harnessing of education, especially at higher levels of liberal arts pedagogy, is in the hands of learners of the future.