Our inefficiency culture

With the UGC scales a college teacher here gets Rs35,000-100,000 a month  and more (for attending exam duty, paper valuation etc.) to teach 2- 3 periods for 120-140 days in an year! Computing the total number of hours one has to attend to duty in an year and dividing them  by 8, a teacher has to work for  30-35 days in an year! For this they are paid up to 12,00,000 (twelve lakhs). The funny part: there is no accountability. They need to go to the class and teach 50minutes. They can give notes (they took down when they studied) or draw a diagram looking into the text book on the board, write the syllabus to be covered for the examination, read from the text and ‘explain’ in a monotone or simply chit-chat. They have to 'teach' until the bell goes and some are least bothered whether the students talk to each other, make phone calls or eat lunch. Some of them do not update on their subject, employ communication and teaching methods to make the sessions effective. How many of them have the aptitude to teach?. UGC is only an objective type exam. Passing it  alone does not qualify one to become a good teacher.   

  

The worst side is, apart from the salary they are given life-long pension (around  Rs50,000/pm) until they or their spouses die! This is taking place in a country where an ordinary clerk (who is almost equally qualified but working 8-10 hours a day except Sundays gets around Rs5000/pm without any pension. Peasants who work for 12 hours a day and get less than Rs80/-a day!  Two distinct classes are created here;  those  who do little and earn high with life-long pension and those who work from dawn to dusk earning  a pittance without any pension. 

The World Bank has remarked that Kerala university graduates are ‘unemployable.’ If youngsters do not know something they can be taught but those who undergo negative training cannot be even put to the right track. The negative example of anyone , even teachers, will de-motivate them.  Even without  teachers, the interested students (as they do now) can still study by themselves the prescribed syllabus and get a pass mark in the university examinations.  After all our university exams are memory exercises!  Most of what is studied for the examination is forgotten once the exams are over; the degree holders are good for government jobs where they  need not do much to earn their pay and pension. There are exceptions but that is not a merit of our educational system. 

Our teachers blame the students for being lazy and aimless. But it is good to remember that youngsters model elders. As the latter so the former as children follow the elders'  examples. If they are not sincere in their work how can they expect the students to be sincere in their studies? The villain: the socialistic inefficiency pervasive in India.