We humans are too familiar with the many
predicaments of social, political and economic life- poverty alleviation,
fighting terrorism, inclusive growth, nuclear wars, alternative energy models,
you name it. Much energy is spent in trying to get to the bottom of these
problems and resolving them. Swept under the rug of such a vast body of dilemmas
though lie some deeply embedded, almost invisible, core issues. Issues that
revolve around our identities, our psyche and our motivations. We cannot avert
our eyes from the inescapable fact that the world around us is changing and
fast. The questions we seek to answer today are not the questions of the last
decade, let alone the last century. And how are we to even know if we are
asking the right questions to begin with? Unless they are “serious” enough they
aren’t deemed to be necessary, or essential enough, because they apparently
lack profundity. I wish to question such a seemingly unimportant social
phenomenon, albeit one that has contributed to a very curious complex. I like
to call it the post-colonial hangover in my own head.
At 16, I was exposed to a very remarkable
pattern of learning and an extremely sustainable teacher-student relationship
at the Goethe Institute. Fresh out of the archaic Indian schooling system, I
was taken aback when we were told not to refer to the teacher as ‘Sir’ or a ‘ma’am’
but just call them by their first name instead. Little did I know that this
seemingly small classroom etiquette would be so largely connected to identity
formation and learning outcomes. As the youngest in class I initially struggled
with it a lot owing to the strong conditioning from schooling. “But he is so
much older than I am”, “Gosh that’s just disrespectful”, or a simple “It’s just
weird” are the kind of mental responses that cropped up instantly. Over the
first few days my teacher noticed my uneasiness about this. One day in the coffee
break, he playfully asked me to construct a sentence that required me to
address him and I was right back in the spot I had been avoiding. I thought
hard-should I start with “Sir...”or just use his name? He noticed my evident
discomfiture at the question and said “Calm down. It’s not that complicated”. What
he spoke to me about next is something I have never forgotten and which strongly
contributed to my understanding of educational practices in the years to come.
We Indians we are so habituated to calling
someone Sir or ma’am as our teacher or perhaps even boss. If older than us, a
relational tag is attached to them-like kaka, chacha, maasi, aunty, etc. Pushing
me to ask myself why I felt uncomfortable calling my teacher by his name was
like opening up Pandora’s Box. So many belief systems were suddenly put under interrogation
all at the same time - I should respect my elders, but why should I respect them? What IS respect actually? Is it
something that comes with a position and hence is something to be demanded or is it something that is to
be earned? How is demanded respect different
from earned respect? What changes inside
me when I call him by his first name? How does respect even matter in my
process of learning? This was probably my first conscious encounter with
critical thinking & I am so glad today for that push he gave me. Over the
years I have observed a range of social and psychological constructs that are
connected to this trend and they seem to exist in a cyclic, mutually
reinforcing pattern.
As of today all our educational institutions
and even some of our workplaces follow the norm of calling someone Sir or ma’am.
It’s true that to run any organization systems and processes are of the
essence. Designations and titles are designed for vertical power structures and
they enable smoother processes through definition of roles. They however forgo
the capacity to be creative and original which often comes from free and genuine
human interaction, independent of barricades. Addressing a teacher by their
first name questions the student’s identity by bringing him into the equation to begin with. The
power structure here instantly becomes a horizontal one as opposed to a
vertical one, allowing more breadth to the learning and it seems to trigger responsibility
in the student. How? Well, it is simply difficult to treat yourself like a
child, when the other person considers you an adult. Respect for oneself and
for the teacher then becomes automatic and mutual. One respects the teacher not
because he “has to” but because he “wants to”. Of course, an inevitable prerequisite
for a teacher’s respect is his/her knowledge of the subject, authenticity as a
person and pedagogic skills, but it is important to note here that the teacher
has earned respect by investing it in
the student and through his/her own performance, instead of demanding it. This amalgamation
of self-responsibility and mutual respect helps the student transition into a
conducive state of mind for knowledge-seeking, creativity and originality. Gradually
and comprehensively all this contributes to both, the formation of student and
individual identity. Education systems
abroad (especially the higher education systems) are structured in a way that
support such finer aspects of human behavior. Interestingly, democratic schools
around the world do not follow the Sir and ma’am practice either. Kids refer to
their teachers by name. This is exceptionally good for the development of what
Psychologist Eric Berne called the ‘adult ego state’ in his theory of
Transactional Analysis. Children learn to think of respect as an investment and
a well-developed adult ego state is the foundation for harmony and success in
many areas of our real adult life.
My philosophy professor from college once shared
a remarkable observation with me before I left for my Masters to the UK in 2007.
He said “you will realize what academic integrity means”, referring to the
pattern of education abroad. It was striking to see that the same country that
had subjected us to slavery through their breakdown of our social backbone via
education no longer follows such autocratic social constructs within their
academic world. ‘Sir’ remains an honorary title bestowed upon someone for
extraordinary contributions to a field of knowledge and hence in fact
associates with merit and not demanded respect. Why then do we still continue
to conform to such norms mindlessly? Why have we gotten so used to giving out
respect for free to everyone but ourselves? It is no wonder then that we have
been failing at original thinking for a long time. Our blind emulation of the west in the social
sphere and our copy-paste mindset in the academic world are testimonies to
that.
Generally speaking, such behavioral practices
appear to be trivial. But in a world of over-stimulation, it is the smaller and
finer details of human interaction that we need to increasingly pay more
focused attention to because they shape our motivations and social framework
through a nexus of influencing factors. The purpose of the academic world is to
be a vanguard for innovative, original and ground breaking ideas and arguably
so, collaboration is the mantra for the times to come. Discriminatory human
interaction based on vertical power structures within the academic world will
lead us nowhere. What will it take for us to unravel the many layers of
borrowed and redundant social fabric we have wrapped around ourselves, even
though they serve no purpose? Are we ready to act in our own favor yet?
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