Celebration of Mediocrity

Padma Devkota

Celebration of Mediocrity

    Ajit Baral's "Importance of being critical" (KTM Post October 2, 2005) drives home a bitter truth to which the concerned authorities of Tribhuvan University have permanently closed their eyes. It is a pleasant surprise for me that the general public should begin to notice the "mockery" that English higher education has become today. The only person in the Central Department of English, T.U., Kirtipur, who never ever compromises with mediocrity is Shreedhar Lohani. He is a very unhappy man today because he continues hoping against hope that things will improve.
    The blurbs on the back cover of Yubaraj Aryal's A Pageant of Short Stories are highly representative of the writers, with one exception. Chandra Prakash Sharma, the present Head of the Central Department of English (CDE) at Kirtipur needs to take a course on how to write correct English. Ajit Baral made too quick a judgment on the basis of a fragment: "An emerging voice in South Asian literature." I need not comment further on the incomprehensible erudition of my once upon a time colleagues. Their columns in The Kathmandu Post are often as interesting as these blurbs.
    These fawning blurbs, in fact, accurately describe certain attitudes. First, fawning promotes peaceful survival in the mob-controlled university campus where individual gains override all healthy institutional promotions. People are happy when they are made to feel superior to what they actually are. If writing blurbs is one approach to making people happy, grading exams and theses is another. The most recent results of MA English First Year and Second Year examinations surprised us all because, as I have been given to understand, no student of the Central Department of English received marks between thirty-five to fifty-five percent. This was nothing more than a survival policy of the academic leadership of the department although he smiled at the Kantipur camera and said that students did well because he told the teachers to teach well and the students to study well. According to him, both obeyed. Let readers infer the accusations he hurled at all his predecessors.
    Similarly, the same fawning "blurbs" function in the evaluation of theses produced in the Central Department of English. I am given to understand that these days no thesis writer receives less than distinction marks, which is eighty percent. As the story goes, a student who appeared for the viva refused to answer questions because he said he neither knew nor cared to know the answers to those questions. He said he needed eighty-nine percent for the thesis he wrote. Because the teachers felt sufficiently threatened, he received the marks he demanded. There are many who demand a certain percentage for the thesis they write, which is neither properly supervised nor judiciously evaluated in most cases. Once, the Head sent a colleague to my place to seek my consent to raise the marks given by the evaluation committee comprising of the Head, the Supervisor and the External Examiner because the student had told him that he wanted more marks. I refused to promote academic corruption on moral grounds.
    It is natural for students to be happy when they receive very high grades. I too would have been happy. I would have been happier if I actually deserved it. However, where does this malpractice take us in the academic journey of the nation? The ignorant army of Master's degree-holders forecast the lasting darkness of this nation's future.
    Second, fawning begets fawning. Our society is a flatterer's paradise. Raise a fool to the status of a sage and the fool will garland you with flowers and flattery. He will also praise your knowledge, kindness, and creamy beard. On the basis of a single story you have written, you will become the Kafka of Nepal. After all, flattery continues to be a paying social practice in Nepal since a very long time ago. A critic used to praise a poet as being greater than Mahakavi Devkota and the poet used to praise him as being the greatest living critic in the whole literary world. Isn't this what we all want? To be happy? To make others happy? If so, fawning is certainly not a malpractice. However, the academia is directly more concerned with the acquisition and increment of knowledge than with personal and individual happiness.
    Once a student leader spoke to me with the best of intentions and suggested that I be more practical. "This is the way the university is running, Sir," he said. "Why do you bother about quality? About five or ten percent of the students will do well. As for the rest, let them come and go the way they are. What difference does it make?" I still do not agree with this attitude, which seeks to please certain groups and individuals rather than promote everyone's well-being. The function of a teacher is to teach well, not to be emotionally entangled with students to the extent of fawning them. Tribhuvan University does not hire teachers to "love" students, but to teach them well.
    However, fawning is an academic practice among those in Tribhuvan University who, for the sake of cheap popularity, are willing to sacrifice all other goals of learning.
The sycophant is the greatest scholar. The person who does not know the difference between gender and feminism is the greatest feminist. The person who segregates eastern knowledge from western knowledge is the most erudite teacher of Intellectual History. The orator who vomits forth the greatest number of neologism, whether he himself understands them or not, is the most versatile person. The columnist who produces articles for the longest period of time is the greatest writer. And, the writer who wonders whether his story contains postmodernism as its component becomes a royal academician.
    Finally, fawning does not create dislikes that may lead to enmities. Some of these writers of blurbs are also advisors of "The Philosophical Journal"—another monstrosity they are promoting at the department—published by Yubaraj Aryal and his friends. When I recall all this and more, my mind returns to Dr. Beerendra Pandey's "Message" published on the twelfth page of the Prospectus of Kathmandu Model College, Bagbazar.  Dr. Pandey, a permanent staff of the Central Department of English, T.U., Kirtipur, writes here as a Coordinator of the MA Programme in English at Kathmandu Model College: "Kathmandu Model College recognizes that English functions not only as a vehicle for international communication but also as a window on the rapid progress of science and technology, and that if Nepal has to keep pace with the rest of he [sic] world, high quality teaching of English is a must. However, in recent years the teaching of English, especially at the apex level—at the Central of [sic] Department of English, T.U., Kirtipur—has reached its nadir mainly due to the jumbo class-size and the vast disparity in the student-teacher ratio. At the present time, it seems unrealistic to pretend that the Central Department of English is turning out students whom an institution can hire with confidence. KMC has stepped in with a view to arresting the slide in the teaching of English at the post-graduate level."
    Let readers infer the honesty with which teachers of T.U. uphold the institution. As for me, I will only say that teachers like Dr. Pandey have the choice of either making enemies or of celebrating mediocrity.

Sunday, October 02, 2005