Padma Devkota
Teaching Writing at CDE
The Central Department of English (CDE) offers a compulsory Writing Course in its first year degree programme to help students conduct independent research and to write creatively and critically. Since students who write well usually score high in all other courses including Thesis, both students and teachers need to take writing seriously.
CDE, however, has failed to deliver this course with any significant degree of success. Because instructors are not properly trained and monitored, they tend to discuss theories of writing more than actually make students write. Both the academic leadership and the size of the class are responsible for this. But it is simply unfortunate that most of the instructors have never been formally trained to write during their academic career.
If no student is worth the MA English degree without at least some mastery over English language, anyone is free to examine the quality of MA theses that graduating students produce. With a few exceptions, one can easily demonstrate a general failure of the very basics of writing in many of these research works. I will not delve into cases of collusion, cut-n'-paste, and other malpractices that are growing and will soon swamp many departments.
Most of these problems can be effectively solved if teachers supervise theses properly, and seriously teach students to write. Instead, certain attitudes have intervened in the possibility of team spirit in the department. Besides the attitude of fawning students and each other, already discussed in "Celebration of Mediocrity," the other is one of fancied superiority of theoreticians over those condescendingly accepted as traditional colleagues. This I-know-more-than-thou attitude is unfortunately founded more on vanity than on actual meritorious scholarship. A neologism-spangled speech may dazzle the innocent public's eye, which, for lack of academic discrimination, can only behold an aura of versatile eminence of the speaker. But what of that! While the best literary scholars of the world strive hard to be simple, our students are brainwashed into thinking that the bigger the words they use, the wiser they are. They, therefore, argue that if you praise the fawning blurbs on their book, you are a postcolonialist, and, if you do not praise these blurbs, you are a colonialist. There is your sample postgraduate in English MA educated by theoreticians and groomed by "some higher consciousness" as SB Shrestha rightly perceives in "Strategic Minds" (TKP Dec 4, 2005).
While teachers have only to be honest to themselves and to their students to improve the situation, it is doubtful that some even read exam copies or chapters of a thesis submitted for correction. How can they if they supervise more than a dozen theses at a time? Why should they when the law of least sacrifice is human nature? Therefore, thesis writing has become a mere ritual where, to the utter neglect of desired research competence, some non-academic criteria help promote the student-loving teacher's image as a generous marker. And, in order to justify this, some claim that a good knowledge of postcoloniality and Marxism is enough to be a "nearly eighty-percent" scholar despite any fuzzy, non-academic writing ("Tantra and English," TKP October 16, 2005). Granted that knowledge is knowledge, the ability to express oneself must somewhere feature as a sign of education. However, for the present I will also concede to opposition to my line of argument because many of those who teach writing do not write well themselves.
For instance, when faced with such criticism, a richly arrogant but poorly composed Letter to the Editor befuddled the public with such jargons as "expressionism" and "elitism" (Abhi Subedi, TKP October 4, 2005). In the name of unfortunate Stony Brook, doctors with neither sense nor sensibility spit personal venom in the form of ad hominems, which are arguments directed against the person rather than against ideas expressed by the person (TKP November 20, 2005). And, one might also ask, "Do columnists of The Kathmandu Post really intend to communicate a message to an audience?"
What has the center for excellence in charge of English education all over Nepal done to improve the situation? In the past academic year, it offered a Writing Tutorial in the afternoon for its own students and compelled them to pay Rs. 2500 per head.
The significance of this strategy is simple. The department faces a genuine problem: most students opt for Thesis in which they can indiscriminately score approximately distinction marks although they may have barely passed in the other nine papers. They will, therefore, savagely resist any attempt to restore the original pre-requisite for Thesis, which is the average score raiser. The department, with its insufficient teaching faculty, then adopts a survival strategy. It attempts to prove that students actually deserve high scores by giving them about fifteen percent grace marks, which is against the rules of the university, for the rest of the other nine papers. Otherwise, the all too glaring discrepancy of marks would remain a telltale blotch. It is quite a face-uplift.
Then, the department decides upon another face-uplift by offering Writing Tutorial classes that turn out to be a grand financial success, but a blatant academic failure. First, the department already offers a compulsory writing course, which, if properly taught, will solve many problems. Second, students have already paid their university dues at the time of registration. Any coaching class that exacts a fee is additional financial burden upon them. Instead, teachers should have been available to them on campus, free of cost, to discuss their difficulties. Third, the head of the department literally intimidates students into registering for the Writing Tutorial by dictatorially turning it into a pre-requisite for the Thesis Paper. He, therefore, coerces them into filling certain coffers, which is shared among teachers who "love" their students.
Intelligent students who understood the importance of research writing at the degree level quietly tolerated this strategy for the benefit of their friends. They paid the dues; but, presaging the quality of the tutorial classes, they did not attend it. It probably was obvious to them that thirty students to a writing tutorial class meant additional lectures on the theories of writing. So, even as the head of the department counted bank notes at his desk and distributed these to selected teachers, students argued that the department should now indiscriminately accept their thesis proposals because they had joined these classes. Consequently, the more conscientious teachers, burning with shame, requested the head to return the money to students for the sake of a more academic line of action.
Imagine what will happen if other departments, too, start running paid tutorial classes for their students. I hope mature students will realize how their zeal for marks sometimes unnecessarily empties their pockets.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
On Authorial Views
Padma Devkota
On Authorial Views
On February 24, 2006, The Rising Nepal published my article "Academia and TU" with a parenthetical footer that read: "The views expressed here are those of the author." (As if they could be somebody else's!) This vestige of Panchyat Regime humoured me, but it also set me thinking about the freedom of expression practiced in democratic Nepal. The need for such parenthetical footer as legal protection against possible lawsuits against Gorkhapatra Sansthan (as if my views were detrimental to an institution!) speaks loudly of the absence of exactly such freedom of expression in the media unless, of course, the footer intended to apologize to the authorities of Tribhuvan University mentioned in my article for having had to publish it. The only other reason could be that the editor is pre-appeasing the boss who might chide him for publishing such views.
Nepal is a country where there are insufficient laws to govern it to the point of civilization. Furthermore, whatever law exists on paper is more often broken than upheld in practice. Despite this sorry reality, frequent instances of fear of being caught up in some legal issues emerge in practices that remain conventional and unquestioned. Surgeons, for example, will not operate even to save life if the patient's kin refuses to sign a legal document saying that, whatever the outcome of surgery may be, no lawsuit will be filed against them. Even if death results out of mere carelessness, they have already, literally been given a licence to kill before they perform the surgery.
Both in the case of authorial views and surgery, the need for legal precaution only proves the possibility of errors. However, the shifting of responsibility from the press to the author also suggests something more: it is as if the editor is telling the author, "I do not think what you say is acceptable to my boss or to the government I serve. Therefore, I am not responsible if …."
As a writer, I have never denied, nor ever will, the responsibility of my words.
And, this is why I was shocked to find The Kathmandu Post refuse to publish three of my articles in which I am fully responsible for the authorial views and opinions. After three failed attempts to publish it in TKP, "Can the English Teacher Speak?" was published in The Rising Nepal on February 3, 2006. The content is strictly non-political in the conventional sense. The language may be a bit too difficult for the ordinary layman, but powerfully expressive. Was it because I wrote it or because it was about the academic malpractice at Tribhuvan University that the editors refused to publish it?
This question has haunted me against the backdrop of the larger issue of press freedom, which is a major political campaign these days. Even as mass media raises its voice against government censorship, like a toad in a serpent's mouth that instinctively flicks its tongue out at a fly, it has refused to publish non-party-political views on national higher education for some obscure reason. An "Opinion Page" of a daily newspaper should provide space for dissemination of the public's opinion, not that of the editors' or of the publishers' alone. Yet, like cab drivers who refuse to take passengers to certain destinations, editors refuse to publish certain views that do not tally with their own. Views, like destinations, are then not the public's choice. Yet, these very editors will publish letters that are stupidly defamatory and libelous of someone they do not support. Or, when they do support someone, even a mediocre is immortalized.
By refusing to publish a critical article such as "Can the English Teacher Speak?" the press has censored an individual's right to self-expression in the same way that the government has curtailed the freedom of the press through severe censorship. Both instances are expressions of power that undermines civilization. If a free society cannot be envisioned in the absence of freedom of the press, a free intellectual cannot exist in the absence of freedom of self-expression. Freedom of the press cannot mean an opportunity for the publishers and editors to advocate their own ideologies at the expense of dissenters who hold other views on issues of national importance. It is common knowledge that TKP does not favour the present government and that TRN will not dare to oppose it. Both being thus positioned at extremities of political ideologies, none is inclined to accept the freedom that is theirs to have. Like a free intellectual, a free press should be able to stand on politically neutral ground to promote critical discussions, however lengthy, on matters of national importance.
And, higher education is a matter of national importance. Failure of national education is failure of the state. Such a failure can only help maintain a slave's mentality. A slavish subjugation to the boss in any bureaucracy is a vestige of feudalistic fatalism. To pretend that no such thing exists or that, even if it does, it is not worth discussing would be hypocritical, or opportunistic at best. This is what the English (and other) teachers are guilty of at present. Instead of promoting academic standards, leadership in the educational field is uncritically submissive to non-academic and cantankerous encroachment in the oldest university of Nepal. Yet, when someone dares speak against this failure of academic ideals, TKP will not publish it! They deny a critical voice even as they accuse the government of stifling their press freedom.
Wisdom lies in a disciplined critical stance that is fully aware of the dichotomy between what should convince others and what actually convinces them. The press, considered as the fourth important body part of the government, cannot afford to play a tyrant to free thought. Let it convince the public by its willingness to promote a society of disciplined dissenters rather than seek to promote favoured ideologies.
On Authorial Views
On February 24, 2006, The Rising Nepal published my article "Academia and TU" with a parenthetical footer that read: "The views expressed here are those of the author." (As if they could be somebody else's!) This vestige of Panchyat Regime humoured me, but it also set me thinking about the freedom of expression practiced in democratic Nepal. The need for such parenthetical footer as legal protection against possible lawsuits against Gorkhapatra Sansthan (as if my views were detrimental to an institution!) speaks loudly of the absence of exactly such freedom of expression in the media unless, of course, the footer intended to apologize to the authorities of Tribhuvan University mentioned in my article for having had to publish it. The only other reason could be that the editor is pre-appeasing the boss who might chide him for publishing such views.
Nepal is a country where there are insufficient laws to govern it to the point of civilization. Furthermore, whatever law exists on paper is more often broken than upheld in practice. Despite this sorry reality, frequent instances of fear of being caught up in some legal issues emerge in practices that remain conventional and unquestioned. Surgeons, for example, will not operate even to save life if the patient's kin refuses to sign a legal document saying that, whatever the outcome of surgery may be, no lawsuit will be filed against them. Even if death results out of mere carelessness, they have already, literally been given a licence to kill before they perform the surgery.
Both in the case of authorial views and surgery, the need for legal precaution only proves the possibility of errors. However, the shifting of responsibility from the press to the author also suggests something more: it is as if the editor is telling the author, "I do not think what you say is acceptable to my boss or to the government I serve. Therefore, I am not responsible if …."
As a writer, I have never denied, nor ever will, the responsibility of my words.
And, this is why I was shocked to find The Kathmandu Post refuse to publish three of my articles in which I am fully responsible for the authorial views and opinions. After three failed attempts to publish it in TKP, "Can the English Teacher Speak?" was published in The Rising Nepal on February 3, 2006. The content is strictly non-political in the conventional sense. The language may be a bit too difficult for the ordinary layman, but powerfully expressive. Was it because I wrote it or because it was about the academic malpractice at Tribhuvan University that the editors refused to publish it?
This question has haunted me against the backdrop of the larger issue of press freedom, which is a major political campaign these days. Even as mass media raises its voice against government censorship, like a toad in a serpent's mouth that instinctively flicks its tongue out at a fly, it has refused to publish non-party-political views on national higher education for some obscure reason. An "Opinion Page" of a daily newspaper should provide space for dissemination of the public's opinion, not that of the editors' or of the publishers' alone. Yet, like cab drivers who refuse to take passengers to certain destinations, editors refuse to publish certain views that do not tally with their own. Views, like destinations, are then not the public's choice. Yet, these very editors will publish letters that are stupidly defamatory and libelous of someone they do not support. Or, when they do support someone, even a mediocre is immortalized.
By refusing to publish a critical article such as "Can the English Teacher Speak?" the press has censored an individual's right to self-expression in the same way that the government has curtailed the freedom of the press through severe censorship. Both instances are expressions of power that undermines civilization. If a free society cannot be envisioned in the absence of freedom of the press, a free intellectual cannot exist in the absence of freedom of self-expression. Freedom of the press cannot mean an opportunity for the publishers and editors to advocate their own ideologies at the expense of dissenters who hold other views on issues of national importance. It is common knowledge that TKP does not favour the present government and that TRN will not dare to oppose it. Both being thus positioned at extremities of political ideologies, none is inclined to accept the freedom that is theirs to have. Like a free intellectual, a free press should be able to stand on politically neutral ground to promote critical discussions, however lengthy, on matters of national importance.
And, higher education is a matter of national importance. Failure of national education is failure of the state. Such a failure can only help maintain a slave's mentality. A slavish subjugation to the boss in any bureaucracy is a vestige of feudalistic fatalism. To pretend that no such thing exists or that, even if it does, it is not worth discussing would be hypocritical, or opportunistic at best. This is what the English (and other) teachers are guilty of at present. Instead of promoting academic standards, leadership in the educational field is uncritically submissive to non-academic and cantankerous encroachment in the oldest university of Nepal. Yet, when someone dares speak against this failure of academic ideals, TKP will not publish it! They deny a critical voice even as they accuse the government of stifling their press freedom.
Wisdom lies in a disciplined critical stance that is fully aware of the dichotomy between what should convince others and what actually convinces them. The press, considered as the fourth important body part of the government, cannot afford to play a tyrant to free thought. Let it convince the public by its willingness to promote a society of disciplined dissenters rather than seek to promote favoured ideologies.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Reply to Birendra Pandey
Padma Devkota
Letter to the Editor
Dr. Beerendra Pandey's "Mocking at Mediocrity: A Disclaimer" (November 20, 2005) has revealed to every intelligent reader the academic quality of a university teacher who also tutors students on how to write. On the one hand, the tone of the write-up speaks for the sensibility of its writer. On the other hand, his claim that my "mischievous use" of his "Message" in the KMC prospectus turns it out to be "inflammatory" only proves the point that he does not understand what he writes.
Rather than be personal like Dr. Pandey, let me draw the readers' attention to the major issues of the debate. Ajit Baral's question on the sincerity of university professors in the blurbs of Yubraj Aryal's collection of short stories is still a burning issue. My article "Celebration of Mediocrity" (KTM Post October 9, 2005) highlights the fawning attitude of university teachers that functions elsewhere too. To prove that it doesn't Dr. Pandey has adopted the strategy of flattering his boss and some others from whom he probably has something to gain. He hopes to please some of his "respectable colleagues including the current HOD, whom I respect very much, both as an administrator and as a person" by slandering me in public. Such intellectual servility is simply another form of sycophancy.
Dr. Pandey's confidence that his dishonest, unethical and unprofessional act of undermining the Central Department of English, TU, Kirtipur, can be washed or waved away simply by chiding me in public and by ludicrously apologizing for what he once sturdily upheld among critical colleagues is really pitiable. He has indeed disclaimed his own institution, Tribhuvan University, because KMC bought his service with money. No, not all the perfumes of Arabia will wash the stain away!
Finally, Dr. Pandey has made his choice clear: to wallow in the sewage, which is worse than to be mediocre. Mediocres can be wonderfully civilized and sociable people despite their intellectual dimness. I cannot say the same thing about Dr. Pandey. Therefore, I am left with no choice but to dismiss and ignore his ranting.
The Kathmandu Post
November 23, 2005
Letter to the Editor
Dr. Beerendra Pandey's "Mocking at Mediocrity: A Disclaimer" (November 20, 2005) has revealed to every intelligent reader the academic quality of a university teacher who also tutors students on how to write. On the one hand, the tone of the write-up speaks for the sensibility of its writer. On the other hand, his claim that my "mischievous use" of his "Message" in the KMC prospectus turns it out to be "inflammatory" only proves the point that he does not understand what he writes.
Rather than be personal like Dr. Pandey, let me draw the readers' attention to the major issues of the debate. Ajit Baral's question on the sincerity of university professors in the blurbs of Yubraj Aryal's collection of short stories is still a burning issue. My article "Celebration of Mediocrity" (KTM Post October 9, 2005) highlights the fawning attitude of university teachers that functions elsewhere too. To prove that it doesn't Dr. Pandey has adopted the strategy of flattering his boss and some others from whom he probably has something to gain. He hopes to please some of his "respectable colleagues including the current HOD, whom I respect very much, both as an administrator and as a person" by slandering me in public. Such intellectual servility is simply another form of sycophancy.
Dr. Pandey's confidence that his dishonest, unethical and unprofessional act of undermining the Central Department of English, TU, Kirtipur, can be washed or waved away simply by chiding me in public and by ludicrously apologizing for what he once sturdily upheld among critical colleagues is really pitiable. He has indeed disclaimed his own institution, Tribhuvan University, because KMC bought his service with money. No, not all the perfumes of Arabia will wash the stain away!
Finally, Dr. Pandey has made his choice clear: to wallow in the sewage, which is worse than to be mediocre. Mediocres can be wonderfully civilized and sociable people despite their intellectual dimness. I cannot say the same thing about Dr. Pandey. Therefore, I am left with no choice but to dismiss and ignore his ranting.
The Kathmandu Post
November 23, 2005
Monday, August 30, 2010
Quest (Poem)
From: Frosty Breath in the Wilderness
by Padma Devkota
Part IV: "Quest"
3.
Teacher:
What a glorious morning this is.
Students, earth has not anything to show
more fair than this mighty heart
of a growing civilization.
First Student:
What civilization, Sir?
Teacher:
Waking up
is the finest moment of life.
Once awake, human intellect
cuts through ignorance like a knife
and serves the main dish of values
that build up civilizations.
Second Student:
Is value a dish, Sir?
Teacher:
Values
and priorities are the basis
of systems that must function well
to maintain civilization.
When we watch the sunrise, we see
that nature too obeys all rules
to maintain her holy practice
of eternal regeneration.
First Student:
Is not nature uncivilized?
Teacher:
Only those who break rules do not
promote civilization.
Those who break rules and upturn values
create their own demonic worlds.
Second Student:
And which is better, Sir?
Teacher:
Better?
That I do not know. But the best
is to follow the morning sun
like a lover, to yearn for it
throughout the night, to take delight
in its presence and to say,
"Sun, may you teach me to wake up
each morning, to brighten others
like you brighten all, and to shed
the light of life upon this world."
First Student:
Sir, what is "the light of life"?
Teacher:
It is not smashing peoples' shins
or quartering off all their limbs,
nor even hurting them with words.
The light of life shines best where we
care for each other's happiness
and tread with sensitive steps the ground
where people's hearts are strewn around,
for hearts are living, hearts are quick
to softest brush of voice and tone.
Of course, we need this crowd on earth;
"Beyond all this, the wish to be alone."
by Padma Devkota
Part IV: "Quest"
3.
Teacher:
What a glorious morning this is.
Students, earth has not anything to show
more fair than this mighty heart
of a growing civilization.
First Student:
What civilization, Sir?
Teacher:
Waking up
is the finest moment of life.
Once awake, human intellect
cuts through ignorance like a knife
and serves the main dish of values
that build up civilizations.
Second Student:
Is value a dish, Sir?
Teacher:
Values
and priorities are the basis
of systems that must function well
to maintain civilization.
When we watch the sunrise, we see
that nature too obeys all rules
to maintain her holy practice
of eternal regeneration.
First Student:
Is not nature uncivilized?
Teacher:
Only those who break rules do not
promote civilization.
Those who break rules and upturn values
create their own demonic worlds.
Second Student:
And which is better, Sir?
Teacher:
Better?
That I do not know. But the best
is to follow the morning sun
like a lover, to yearn for it
throughout the night, to take delight
in its presence and to say,
"Sun, may you teach me to wake up
each morning, to brighten others
like you brighten all, and to shed
the light of life upon this world."
First Student:
Sir, what is "the light of life"?
Teacher:
It is not smashing peoples' shins
or quartering off all their limbs,
nor even hurting them with words.
The light of life shines best where we
care for each other's happiness
and tread with sensitive steps the ground
where people's hearts are strewn around,
for hearts are living, hearts are quick
to softest brush of voice and tone.
Of course, we need this crowd on earth;
"Beyond all this, the wish to be alone."
Faction (Poem)
From: Frosty Breath in the Wilderness
by Padma Devkota
"Faction"
2.
Old Sage:
Aum! May the Goddess Vak grant tongues to you all!
Now listen to the gospel of the Sky.
We are all in essence one. What flows down
from the source is not changed by the nature
of the terrain that encloses it. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! We are all in essence one. Aum!
Old Sage:
Aum! We, the children of Nature, are fed
by father Infinite Space who loves us.
What love begets must not kick with anger.
Rebellion is a slow suicide.
Submit to ancestral wisdom. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! We submit to ancestral wisdom. Aum!
Old Sage:
Aum! Upon the altar of Earth, like butter
the clouds melt with the fire of the Sun
to create heat, which is life. Without heat
there can be no life. Pour butter into
the holy pit each morning to appease
Agni, the fire that sustains life. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! Without heat there can be no life. Aum!
Old Sage:
Aum! Upon the altar of life, shed actions
that melt like pure butter without residue
of greed, or lust, or desire. Appease
the Creator with pure devotion
to Him through nature and through gods. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! We shall not desire nor lust. Aum!
Old Sage:
Aum! Listen to the gospel of the Sky.
It is a sea of individual minds.
The drop that refuses to lose itself
in the water of the palm shall dry dead.
Mingling with the rest it shall survive. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! We shall merge like drops with other pools. Aum!
Old Sage:
Blessings upon you all! May Goddess Vak,
too, bless you with learning.
Dismiss. Now go
and leave me to my solitude where I
may with closed eyes read the gospel of the Sky.
by Padma Devkota
"Faction"
2.
Old Sage:
Aum! May the Goddess Vak grant tongues to you all!
Now listen to the gospel of the Sky.
We are all in essence one. What flows down
from the source is not changed by the nature
of the terrain that encloses it. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! We are all in essence one. Aum!
Old Sage:
Aum! We, the children of Nature, are fed
by father Infinite Space who loves us.
What love begets must not kick with anger.
Rebellion is a slow suicide.
Submit to ancestral wisdom. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! We submit to ancestral wisdom. Aum!
Old Sage:
Aum! Upon the altar of Earth, like butter
the clouds melt with the fire of the Sun
to create heat, which is life. Without heat
there can be no life. Pour butter into
the holy pit each morning to appease
Agni, the fire that sustains life. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! Without heat there can be no life. Aum!
Old Sage:
Aum! Upon the altar of life, shed actions
that melt like pure butter without residue
of greed, or lust, or desire. Appease
the Creator with pure devotion
to Him through nature and through gods. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! We shall not desire nor lust. Aum!
Old Sage:
Aum! Listen to the gospel of the Sky.
It is a sea of individual minds.
The drop that refuses to lose itself
in the water of the palm shall dry dead.
Mingling with the rest it shall survive. Aum!
Pupils:
Aum! We shall merge like drops with other pools. Aum!
Old Sage:
Blessings upon you all! May Goddess Vak,
too, bless you with learning.
Dismiss. Now go
and leave me to my solitude where I
may with closed eyes read the gospel of the Sky.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Congratulations in Retrospect
Padma Devkota
Congratulations in Retrospect!
Immediately after the then Rector of Tribhuvan University Professor Dr. Mahendra Prasad Singh announced on TV the twenty percent internal assessment marks policy I congratulated him in advance in The Kathmandu Post of November 26, 2005. Once again, I take this opportunity to congratulate him in retrospect for his pragmatically successful policy. TU has indeed succeeded in diluting the academic strength of private colleges, too.
Since it is time for colleges to submit the twenty percent internal assessment marks to the examination section at Balkhu, private colleges are obviously worried about their students’ grades. They have only the Central Department of English (CDE) at Kirtipur to look up to as a model. CDE, however, has remained as blunt as ever to the requirements of academic culture. Unable to function in any other way, it has conducted a test for its registered crowd and has decided upon a specific policy of grading: everyone will be given marks between twelve and eighteen out of twenty for the internal assessment. This means that any student who has signed the exam attendance sheet will receive nothing below twelve out of twenty, which is 60%. What a luxury for fortunate students who don’t have to write a single word to receive a first division mark! And, of course, students need not be all present for the test at the same time. Anyone who misses the test will be given a chance to appear for it on demand.
And, if they do write something, they will receive a maximum of eighteen out of twenty, which is 90%. A real distinction! No one is going to get anything more than this despite their extra brilliance. And, examiners don’t have to be too careful in reading and grading student papers (which is generally not their habit anyway) because the marks students receive are determined less on the basis of academic performance than on the basis of a collusion between the Head of the Department, a few senior teachers and the representatives of the students themselves. These people sit down together and decide which student gets what.
Against this practice, private colleges are helpless. Throughout the year, teachers have properly monitored the academic performance of their students. Grades received for each class or home assignment are meaningful. And, students have written real research papers! Most of them have attended classes regularly unlike many of their counterparts in TU colleges. They have participated in class discussions, raised intelligent questions, and made serious attempts to learn. Even during long periods of time when TU campuses were shut down for political and other reasons, students of private colleges were attending classes and their teachers were constantly challenging them to excel themselves.
Given this reality, do students of private colleges deserve anything less than what their counterparts at CDE receive? Examination marks are academic signifiers, not gift parcels. If teachers of private campuses go by the rules of TU (that CDE itself does not follow), distinction is a mark of excellence. The five slots into which TU examinees of the Masters Level may fall are: Fail (0-39), Third Division (40-49), Second Division (50-59), First Division (60-74), and Distinction (75 and above). However, Tribhuvan University, and specially CDE, has made it their noble practice of offering marks as gifts to students out of love for the poor non-metropolitans (this democratically includes the metropolitans!) who have not had a chance to go to good private schools in their poverty-ridden villages. This is how the teaching faculty of CDE broke into three factions in the recent past: a group of teachers who artfully professed love for their students and slandered other colleagues as teachers who did not love their students even as a third group of teachers lost their voice out of fear of having to speak up.
Ironically, teachers who were not supposed to have loved their students were academically more demanding than those who loved their students. This resulted in the student-loving faction attempting to slander the non-student-loving teachers in various ways. One of the strategies was to befriend students and fill their ears against the academically more demanding colleagues. What is a greater crime than when a scholar colleague leaves the examination room after the thesis viva-voce of a student is over and, out of holy love for the student, tells him or her outside the examination hall that, although s/he wanted to give the student eighty-five percent, so-and-so objected to such high marks and gave him only seventy-two. And, what authority does this colleague assume to announce TU examination marks to the student before the Examination Board does so?
I explained the transparency of the policy of the Rector’s Office in my article of November 26, 2005: “since TU is unable to uplift its academic face, why not use the cosmetics of marks! And this too against the backdrop of competitions with younger universities that have a different grading system that marks down from one hundred rather than up from zero. After all, marks don't really have to stand for academic achievement; they may stand for various levels of ignorance or even for the intensity of ‘love’ the teachers profess for their students.” Today, it is clear that private colleges, too, are expected to play the “loving teachers” for the sake of justifying the malpractice of the central departments of Tribhuvan University. They too have been forced to say: “We will give first division marks to anyone who was present at the internal assessment exam even if that student has written nothing on the answer paper. We will not give anything over 90% to anyone.”
I am sure teachers are happy because they do not have to read any answer papers to give first division or distinction marks to students. And students are happy because they don’t have to write anything sensible to obtain first division or distinction marks. This is the present reality of our oldest university.
I must congratulate the Rector’s Office of Tribhuvan University for such a wonderful decision, which has led to the happiness of the majority.
Sarve bhavantu shukhina… May everyone (unconcerned for the morrow) be happy!
From: The Kathmandu Post Thursday, December 21, 2006
Congratulations in Retrospect!
Immediately after the then Rector of Tribhuvan University Professor Dr. Mahendra Prasad Singh announced on TV the twenty percent internal assessment marks policy I congratulated him in advance in The Kathmandu Post of November 26, 2005. Once again, I take this opportunity to congratulate him in retrospect for his pragmatically successful policy. TU has indeed succeeded in diluting the academic strength of private colleges, too.
Since it is time for colleges to submit the twenty percent internal assessment marks to the examination section at Balkhu, private colleges are obviously worried about their students’ grades. They have only the Central Department of English (CDE) at Kirtipur to look up to as a model. CDE, however, has remained as blunt as ever to the requirements of academic culture. Unable to function in any other way, it has conducted a test for its registered crowd and has decided upon a specific policy of grading: everyone will be given marks between twelve and eighteen out of twenty for the internal assessment. This means that any student who has signed the exam attendance sheet will receive nothing below twelve out of twenty, which is 60%. What a luxury for fortunate students who don’t have to write a single word to receive a first division mark! And, of course, students need not be all present for the test at the same time. Anyone who misses the test will be given a chance to appear for it on demand.
And, if they do write something, they will receive a maximum of eighteen out of twenty, which is 90%. A real distinction! No one is going to get anything more than this despite their extra brilliance. And, examiners don’t have to be too careful in reading and grading student papers (which is generally not their habit anyway) because the marks students receive are determined less on the basis of academic performance than on the basis of a collusion between the Head of the Department, a few senior teachers and the representatives of the students themselves. These people sit down together and decide which student gets what.
Against this practice, private colleges are helpless. Throughout the year, teachers have properly monitored the academic performance of their students. Grades received for each class or home assignment are meaningful. And, students have written real research papers! Most of them have attended classes regularly unlike many of their counterparts in TU colleges. They have participated in class discussions, raised intelligent questions, and made serious attempts to learn. Even during long periods of time when TU campuses were shut down for political and other reasons, students of private colleges were attending classes and their teachers were constantly challenging them to excel themselves.
Given this reality, do students of private colleges deserve anything less than what their counterparts at CDE receive? Examination marks are academic signifiers, not gift parcels. If teachers of private campuses go by the rules of TU (that CDE itself does not follow), distinction is a mark of excellence. The five slots into which TU examinees of the Masters Level may fall are: Fail (0-39), Third Division (40-49), Second Division (50-59), First Division (60-74), and Distinction (75 and above). However, Tribhuvan University, and specially CDE, has made it their noble practice of offering marks as gifts to students out of love for the poor non-metropolitans (this democratically includes the metropolitans!) who have not had a chance to go to good private schools in their poverty-ridden villages. This is how the teaching faculty of CDE broke into three factions in the recent past: a group of teachers who artfully professed love for their students and slandered other colleagues as teachers who did not love their students even as a third group of teachers lost their voice out of fear of having to speak up.
Ironically, teachers who were not supposed to have loved their students were academically more demanding than those who loved their students. This resulted in the student-loving faction attempting to slander the non-student-loving teachers in various ways. One of the strategies was to befriend students and fill their ears against the academically more demanding colleagues. What is a greater crime than when a scholar colleague leaves the examination room after the thesis viva-voce of a student is over and, out of holy love for the student, tells him or her outside the examination hall that, although s/he wanted to give the student eighty-five percent, so-and-so objected to such high marks and gave him only seventy-two. And, what authority does this colleague assume to announce TU examination marks to the student before the Examination Board does so?
I explained the transparency of the policy of the Rector’s Office in my article of November 26, 2005: “since TU is unable to uplift its academic face, why not use the cosmetics of marks! And this too against the backdrop of competitions with younger universities that have a different grading system that marks down from one hundred rather than up from zero. After all, marks don't really have to stand for academic achievement; they may stand for various levels of ignorance or even for the intensity of ‘love’ the teachers profess for their students.” Today, it is clear that private colleges, too, are expected to play the “loving teachers” for the sake of justifying the malpractice of the central departments of Tribhuvan University. They too have been forced to say: “We will give first division marks to anyone who was present at the internal assessment exam even if that student has written nothing on the answer paper. We will not give anything over 90% to anyone.”
I am sure teachers are happy because they do not have to read any answer papers to give first division or distinction marks to students. And students are happy because they don’t have to write anything sensible to obtain first division or distinction marks. This is the present reality of our oldest university.
I must congratulate the Rector’s Office of Tribhuvan University for such a wonderful decision, which has led to the happiness of the majority.
Sarve bhavantu shukhina… May everyone (unconcerned for the morrow) be happy!
From: The Kathmandu Post Thursday, December 21, 2006
Congratulations in Advance
Congratulations in Advance!
Padma Devkota
Our impatience to share joys with our loved ones almost always gushes uncontrollably forth prior to the event or the occasion that is supposed to cause such joys, thereby inverting the causal universe on its head. At such moments, we live in Alice's Wonderland where characters bleed before the needle pricks them, where fallacies of causal relationships overtake our rationality and render us into a bundle of emotions. Long before the wedding day, we offer our felicitations to the bride or the groom. We extend our best wishes to those who are about to venture into a new space of adventure. We wish a very Happy New Year to each other before the old year is out or a very Happy Vijaya Dashami before the festival is in. Our longing for such moments of joy circulates torrentially in our veins to reduce our competence of expression to a mere utterance of joy.
After listening to the Rector of Tribhuvan University on TV, I am so overwhelmed with excitement that I must congratulate him for his recent announcement of the twenty percent internal assessment marks policy. According to this policy, TU will allow campuses to conduct an internal assessment worth twenty percent out of a centralised one hundred percent at all academic levels if they want to do so, but will immediately and compulsorily implement this policy at the degree level with the help of the subject teacher. This mark of trust by the TU academic head in the competence of all its teachers is a dawn of civilization on campus for it certainly offers academic respect to all who deserve it. I, for one, would have appreciated it even more had subject teachers been trusted to handle not just the twenty percent but the whole one hundred percent of the examination marks. This would have been of greater advantage to both the students and the academic policy makers of the university.
I say so because the policy of the Rector's Office is transparent: since TU is unable to uplift its academic face, why not use the cosmetics of marks! And this too against the backdrop of competitions with younger universities that have a different grading system that marks down from one hundred rather than up from zero. After all, marks don't really have to stand for academic achievement; they may stand for various levels of ignorance or even for the intensity of "love" the teachers profess for their students.
And, how does this policy work? If Dharahara does not grow taller after whitewashing and renovation, it will at least look more presentable. That is the effect of cosmetics. That is why the burden of whitewashing TU academics has been partly decentralised to naïve teachers whose seats (if they have any) are bound to be set on fire (if they are just that lucky!) by demands for twenty out of twenty in the internal assessment marks. Any refusal to comply will surely be met with threats and abuses or even actual violence. This is a prediction, not an assumption.
History has told sadder tales than this. The hasty, failed experiment of the mid-seventies points a warning index at this new policy. During a politically more stable and better disciplined decade, the internal assessment system collapsed because TU could not offer any means of resisting student pressure upon teachers to give them twenty out of twenty for the internal assessment. Students threatened resisting teachers with knives and muscles, with threats and abuses, even as the university forgave them all like Christ on the cross. How does TU expect its teachers to resist the pressure of students who have adopted violence and incendiary techniques to score better marks today?
I do not believe that the Rector's Office expects teachers to resist such pressures, except at the theoretical level. It cannot, because it has already confessed to me that it cannot offer work with dignity to its academic staff. So, it has fallen into the rut of accepting the incapacity of individuals (including medical doctors) to change the ugly reality of the university's diseased system. Because this much is clear, I have attempted a calculation of the present pass marks for the degree level examination. On paper, it is forty percent. In practice, it is approximately five marks out of eighty, which is 6.25%.
How does this happen? First, since any exam (theses, for instance) handled individually by the subject teacher is not normally scored below ninety percent for obvious reasons that I have discussed in earlier articles, I discount the possibility of any student receiving anything below eighteen out of twenty in the internal assessment marks. This already brings the Master's level pass marks down to twenty to twenty-two percent. Second, the university has a tradition of offering a five percent grace marks to students for any exam. This brings the pass marks down to fifteen to seventeen percent. And, finally, the trend in some departments is to give students an additional ten to fifteen percent grace marks on their own discretion. Let us suppose that the five percent grace offered by the university is included in this range. Even then, this will bring the pass marks for the degree level examinations down to something between five to twelve percent. This pass percentage descends even lower at the hands of teachers who "love" their students. If one may obtain a Master's degree by scoring even twenty percent, who wouldn't?
The private student will certainly lose twenty percent of the total score simply by not registering as a regular student. Since attendance, like pass marks, has a double face by TU standards, it is academically suicidal to remain a private student. Therefore, my suggestions in "Admissions Open" (KTM Post Nov 12, 2005) stand even stronger than before.
The only question that nags me is this: Why does TU not switch over form its present marking system to a grading system instead of using cosmetics to uplift its face? It is daylight clear to the whole world that students who received a mere fifty percent five years ago were better products than students who receive sixty percent today. If the university continues merely whitewashing its face, there will soon come a time when employers and other universities of the world will reject its products as being academically underqualified. TU alone cannot define academics. It has to comply with the academic standard set by many other universities of the world if it wants to carry any conviction at all. Any refusal to do so is anti-nationalistic.
Contrary to the requirements of academic promotion, the Rector's Office has decided what it has decided: to whitewash its academic face even if that means to fall from the academic standard. The cosmetic effect has already brightened the faces of the policy makers and the students of TU. Students obviously understand only marks. The Rector also seems to understand only his term in office, which has to pass smoothly and without any untoward event. Even as I foresee the consequences of this decision, I must congratulate the policy makers in advance for the whitewash that has uplifted the academic face of TU, for the better scores that students will inevitably receive in the next exam as a testimony to their academic ability, and for the garlanding and honours the Rector may receive for his presumably innovative idea.
From: The Kathmandu Post Saturday, November 26, 2005
Padma Devkota
Our impatience to share joys with our loved ones almost always gushes uncontrollably forth prior to the event or the occasion that is supposed to cause such joys, thereby inverting the causal universe on its head. At such moments, we live in Alice's Wonderland where characters bleed before the needle pricks them, where fallacies of causal relationships overtake our rationality and render us into a bundle of emotions. Long before the wedding day, we offer our felicitations to the bride or the groom. We extend our best wishes to those who are about to venture into a new space of adventure. We wish a very Happy New Year to each other before the old year is out or a very Happy Vijaya Dashami before the festival is in. Our longing for such moments of joy circulates torrentially in our veins to reduce our competence of expression to a mere utterance of joy.
After listening to the Rector of Tribhuvan University on TV, I am so overwhelmed with excitement that I must congratulate him for his recent announcement of the twenty percent internal assessment marks policy. According to this policy, TU will allow campuses to conduct an internal assessment worth twenty percent out of a centralised one hundred percent at all academic levels if they want to do so, but will immediately and compulsorily implement this policy at the degree level with the help of the subject teacher. This mark of trust by the TU academic head in the competence of all its teachers is a dawn of civilization on campus for it certainly offers academic respect to all who deserve it. I, for one, would have appreciated it even more had subject teachers been trusted to handle not just the twenty percent but the whole one hundred percent of the examination marks. This would have been of greater advantage to both the students and the academic policy makers of the university.
I say so because the policy of the Rector's Office is transparent: since TU is unable to uplift its academic face, why not use the cosmetics of marks! And this too against the backdrop of competitions with younger universities that have a different grading system that marks down from one hundred rather than up from zero. After all, marks don't really have to stand for academic achievement; they may stand for various levels of ignorance or even for the intensity of "love" the teachers profess for their students.
And, how does this policy work? If Dharahara does not grow taller after whitewashing and renovation, it will at least look more presentable. That is the effect of cosmetics. That is why the burden of whitewashing TU academics has been partly decentralised to naïve teachers whose seats (if they have any) are bound to be set on fire (if they are just that lucky!) by demands for twenty out of twenty in the internal assessment marks. Any refusal to comply will surely be met with threats and abuses or even actual violence. This is a prediction, not an assumption.
History has told sadder tales than this. The hasty, failed experiment of the mid-seventies points a warning index at this new policy. During a politically more stable and better disciplined decade, the internal assessment system collapsed because TU could not offer any means of resisting student pressure upon teachers to give them twenty out of twenty for the internal assessment. Students threatened resisting teachers with knives and muscles, with threats and abuses, even as the university forgave them all like Christ on the cross. How does TU expect its teachers to resist the pressure of students who have adopted violence and incendiary techniques to score better marks today?
I do not believe that the Rector's Office expects teachers to resist such pressures, except at the theoretical level. It cannot, because it has already confessed to me that it cannot offer work with dignity to its academic staff. So, it has fallen into the rut of accepting the incapacity of individuals (including medical doctors) to change the ugly reality of the university's diseased system. Because this much is clear, I have attempted a calculation of the present pass marks for the degree level examination. On paper, it is forty percent. In practice, it is approximately five marks out of eighty, which is 6.25%.
How does this happen? First, since any exam (theses, for instance) handled individually by the subject teacher is not normally scored below ninety percent for obvious reasons that I have discussed in earlier articles, I discount the possibility of any student receiving anything below eighteen out of twenty in the internal assessment marks. This already brings the Master's level pass marks down to twenty to twenty-two percent. Second, the university has a tradition of offering a five percent grace marks to students for any exam. This brings the pass marks down to fifteen to seventeen percent. And, finally, the trend in some departments is to give students an additional ten to fifteen percent grace marks on their own discretion. Let us suppose that the five percent grace offered by the university is included in this range. Even then, this will bring the pass marks for the degree level examinations down to something between five to twelve percent. This pass percentage descends even lower at the hands of teachers who "love" their students. If one may obtain a Master's degree by scoring even twenty percent, who wouldn't?
The private student will certainly lose twenty percent of the total score simply by not registering as a regular student. Since attendance, like pass marks, has a double face by TU standards, it is academically suicidal to remain a private student. Therefore, my suggestions in "Admissions Open" (KTM Post Nov 12, 2005) stand even stronger than before.
The only question that nags me is this: Why does TU not switch over form its present marking system to a grading system instead of using cosmetics to uplift its face? It is daylight clear to the whole world that students who received a mere fifty percent five years ago were better products than students who receive sixty percent today. If the university continues merely whitewashing its face, there will soon come a time when employers and other universities of the world will reject its products as being academically underqualified. TU alone cannot define academics. It has to comply with the academic standard set by many other universities of the world if it wants to carry any conviction at all. Any refusal to do so is anti-nationalistic.
Contrary to the requirements of academic promotion, the Rector's Office has decided what it has decided: to whitewash its academic face even if that means to fall from the academic standard. The cosmetic effect has already brightened the faces of the policy makers and the students of TU. Students obviously understand only marks. The Rector also seems to understand only his term in office, which has to pass smoothly and without any untoward event. Even as I foresee the consequences of this decision, I must congratulate the policy makers in advance for the whitewash that has uplifted the academic face of TU, for the better scores that students will inevitably receive in the next exam as a testimony to their academic ability, and for the garlanding and honours the Rector may receive for his presumably innovative idea.
From: The Kathmandu Post Saturday, November 26, 2005
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