Where Angels Fear to Tread

Could what Alexander Pope once wrote happen in a college in Malabar? Read on to learn about the conduct of a seminar on higher education which affirms what the poet once wrote. The seminar dealt with a theme of profound significance - Problems and prospects in restructuring of the UG courses in Kerala and was sponsored by the Higher Education Council , Government of Kerala. This article tells you how it was reduced to the status of a local residential association meeting!

It is hard to believe that the seminar hosted by a premier institution of higher education in the Malabar region, the Government College of Teacher Education, Calicut on 13th March 2008, could turn out to be a mockery of higher education. The total participants who registered to attend the seminar was less than fifteen! Of the abysmally low registered participants, nine were teachers of the college which hosted the seminar. Only six teachers from the one hundred and fifty odd colleges affiliated to the University of Calicut were present!

Three teacher educators of the local colleges who registered for the seminar, disgusted at the conduct of the seminar, in protest, left the venue without attending the after noon session of the seminar.

A few teachers of neighbouring institutions it was found , refused to attend the seminar for two reasons . First, the school background of an invited speaker of the morning session (A Project Officer of SSA- a primary school development programme) for a seminar on higher education was improper. Second, they were sceptical of the intellectual calibre of the president of the afternoon session who was expected to lead a workshop on the theme of the seminar. The ‘session president’ had a mere three year college teaching experience, while most of the teachers of the neighbouring institutions who wanted to attend the seminar had more than ten years experience!

Enquiries revealed that the normal procedure to be followed in conducting Extension Activities such as seminars in institutions of higher learning was flouted by the college which hosted the seminar. It was shocking to learn that the decision to conduct this significant seminar was not discussed in the hosting college’s Staff Council meeting. The ‘seminar coordinator’ and the afternoon ‘session president’ it was learned had assumed these position themselves, even though there were many senior and experienced faculty members in the college.

Criticism was also leveled against the ‘seminar coordinator’ and the afternoon ‘session president’ for denying opportunity for participants to present papers on the theme of the seminar, despite repeated requests by the Principal. (Could this be one reason why the Principal disappeared from the Seminar hall , 45 minutes after the commencement of the seminar, never to return again?)

Can such irresponsible acts in a teacher training college , which involves the criminal waste of money given by the Government of Kerala, which is nothing but the tax payer’s money be justified???