JNU student explains why attendance rule is wrong and unnecessary
Non-coercion on the question of classroom attendance is central to the educational model
Over the past week, thousands of students have been gathering regularly at the administrative block of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), demanding rollback of the new compulsory attendance rule. Outsiders seem to wonder what the fuss is all about. It has even been suggested that a fight for the right to not attend classes is too trivial for students who have been at the forefront of bigger battles.
An inexplicable rule
To start with, let me clarify that the issue is not one of attending classes alone. About 75 per cent attendance in a semester, to be registered at our respective departments, has been made compulsory for research students as well. The rule is absurd, for the departments do not have adequate workspaces for all students.
Moreover, as researchers they are actually expected to visit libraries and archives, attend seminars, conferences and (formal and informal) research group meetings, away from the campus. Sitting at their departments is counterproductive for their research and visiting the departments every morning to just sign the register, even if they are not to work there, is inconvenient in a big campus with limited transport facilities.
In Master’s programmes, involving classroom teaching, compulsory attendance is unnecessary. Our teachers have repeatedly pointed out that there has never been a problem of mass absenteeism in JNU. Non-course work activities have always happened alongside regular classes and research. Even now, as the university remains on strike, several teachers have taken well-attended classes in the open.
In addition, attendance in classes hardly guarantees positive learning outcomes. The conversation on academic standards needs to be centred not on attendance but on the challenges in producing the classroom as an equalising and democratic space where students can shed their social inhibitions and become equal partners in knowledge creation.
Even then, one might wonder, if students attend classes anyway, then why can they not sign the attendance sheet? The refusal of the students may appear as unnecessary as the rule itself.
As a matter of fact, when first promulgated, the rule inspired bewilderment rather than an immediate angry refusal among the Master’s students. The anger erupted when, at their slightest insistence on the nonsensical nature of the rule, they were threatened with the withdrawal of hostel facilities, and registration for the next semester was made conditional on following the rule. Now they are as angry at the rule as at the vehemence and ferocity with which it has been imposed.
Why do we need the rule all of a sudden?
The autocratic actions of the administration have made the students ask if there is more to this rule than meets the eye. Why an institution, which has been consistently awarded extremely high grades by the National Attendance and Accreditation Council (NAAC), suddenly needs this rule to improve academic standards, the students ask.
To all those familiar with the functioning of publicly-funded central universities, it should be clear that their improvement requires more research fellowships that will allow them to match up to foreign universities, better infrastructure, translations of books in English into vernaculars, better language training programme in the social sciences, so on and so forth.
The students feel that the new attendance rule is an eyewash. Seemingly innocuous, it is geared towards drawing public attention away from the fact that none of what needs to be done to strengthen public universities are actually being carried out. Rather, in a lopsided educational policy, low levels of funding for education are hastening their decline, paving the way for privatisation of higher education.
Our public universities need state support, particularly at a time when a new generation of scholars and students from historically disadvantaged sections in Indian society have been using the public university space to articulate more egalitarian political futures. Students of JNU, Hyderabad Central University, and Punjab University, to name a few, have been at the forefront of the struggles to reverse the skewed educational policies.
Instead of being offered solidarity, the student movements for non-discriminatory admission procedures, for changing the cultures of pedagogy and communication in light of the altered demography of our public universities, and for rendering the university spaces apposite to the needs, expectations and educational ideals of the students hailing from non-elite backgrounds, have been branded anti-national. Such branding has created a public sense that these students are unruly, undisciplined and least interested in studies.
At the cost of sounding sinister, JNU students suggest that the attendance rule is meant to keep the so-called unruly lot under surveillance and create new opportunities to penalise them. Their protests against an apparently harmless rule will also confirm the negative stereotypes about them.
What’s at stake in JNU?
Far from being harmless, the rule threatens to fundamentally damage the educational model that produces students as eager participants in public debates and movements. The model consists of a fine balance between regular academics and non-coursework activities, including student politics, democratic student-teacher relationships and a non-coercive learning environment.
Non-coercion on the question of classroom attendance is central to the educational model. For instance, in the MA programme at the Centre for Historical Studies, attendance at tutorial discussions, and not in the classroom, is compulsory. The rationale here is that the tutorials, written on the basis of class lectures, study materials and the students’ engagements outside coursework, are better reflections of the students’ learning than the mere fact of sitting in class.
Besides, the vindictiveness with which the attendance rule is being implemented threatens the mutuality of teacher-student relations in JNU. In a situation, where both teachers and students are being threatened separately regarding consequences of non-compliance, dangerous rifts are arising between them. Who is to bear the brunt of eventual punitive action by the administration? The question is rapidly polarising the campus.
As of now, both students and the majority of teachers have kept aside their fears and stood united. Students have mobilised themselves in unprecedented numbers, organising themselves bottom-up – at the level of classes, then batches, followed by centres and schools and finally through the students’ union (JNUSU). This nature of mobilisation is unusual in JNU, where movements are generally directed by the political organisations in conjunction with the JNUSU.
The ferocity of the administration has brought back painful memories of unsuccessful student movements to prevent seat-cuts, preserve the hard-earned system of deprivation points in the JNU entrance for students from marginalised backgrounds, and keep alive the potent Gender Sensitisation Committee against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH). Students feel insulted by the disdain shown by the administration towards the efforts put in by generations of students in building up the above-mentioned pillars of the university.
They are even prepared to invite wrath of the high court by protesting at the administrative block. So desperate they are to get themselves heard.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the attendance issue is only a trigger; the students are fighting for a lot more – for the recognition of their well thought out ideas on issues that concern their lives and the general public good, and for preserving an educational model that has enabled such thinking. Is that not what the educational systems of public universities are meant for?