(A Curious case of LMS and delay in the appointment of Guest Faculties in Government First Degree Colleges of Karnataka)
The education system, an institutionalized classifier… transforms social classifications into academic classifications, with every appearance of neutrality.
-Pierre Bourdieu
I have often wondered at the clarion call of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar – “Educate, Unite and Agitate” given on July 20, 1942 at All India Depressed Classes Conference in Nagpur. I have dwelled on the importance of education to organize and mount a struggle against systemic injustice perpetrated by the privileged. As the unprivileged section of the society realized the importance of education and made it to higher education there has been a counter movement to deny and derail their education through policies, change in the pedagogy through structural changes, pulling education out from the modern education scientific rationale to a mythical, ultra-nationalistic mode of learning. The article tries to understand how education is denied to the students of depressed classes by looking at the prevailing confusion regarding the appointment of guest faculties in the Government First Grade College of Karnataka.
The state of Karnataka (with BJP Govt at the helm then) was one of the few states which embraced and hastily implemented NEP 2020. NEP 2020, as we all know, was a policy which was pushed through without sufficient deliberation in the parliament and broader consultation with stakeholders, state government, civil society organizations and the public in general. NEP 2020 only made the matter worse for the students of the state. It exacerbated exclusion by ignoring social injustice and mass education. It encouraged further commercialization of education by deepening the role of private players. Beyond all these, what caught my attention was NEP 2020’s emphasis on the online virtual education and how it has impacted education especially in the Government First Grade Colleges of Karnataka.
India witnessed a sudden surge of interest in online virtual education during Covid-19. It is estimated that close to USD 1.4 billion in investments was attracted to India. Many industry pundits predicted the investment tripling in few years. Until then little-known startups Unacademy, Eruditus, UpGrad, BYJUs became a household name. In the same period Department of Collegiate and technical education (DCE) introduced LMS – Learning Management System, a digital platform launched by the Government of Karnataka. It was designed for the First Grade, Polytechnic, and Engineering colleges and claimed to “enhance teaching and learning, offer features like online content access, assessments, performance analytics, discussion forum to empower students and teachers” It was made accessible through a website and mobile app. The platform was developed by Pune based Enthralltech private limited. The then Government of Karnataka struck a deal with the company of questionable repute and LMS was touted as a landmark and revolutionary move in the field of education by the then Higher Education minister and Commissioner of DCE.
Now that the platform was ready (after a murky deal with a suspicious company) content was to be uploaded. Teachers were coerced to prepare content. Those who questioned the rationality of the platform were silenced, threatened with show cause notices.
Higher authorities (principal secretary) who took special interest to investigate the utility of the online platform and the trails of the murky deal were shunted out. In an environment of repression, teachers found it safe to upload substandard videos, study material and MCQs rather than face the music from the department headed by a dictatorial commissioner and his subordinates. A band of newly recruited assistant professors, unwilling to travel and teach in distant cities became a part of the team involved in coercion and harassment of teachers. The team constantly pestered the teachers to upload content or to accept a suspension order! The team sent circulars to colleges insisting the teachers to further cajole students to login and watch the content. They needed login data to bestow credibility to a disaster called LMS. LMS exists even to this day and it is dreaded by the teachers and the students alike like the Nazi SS team was dreaded during the Second World War.
Online education platforms such as LMS facilitate corporate control of course. Universities just play a second fiddle to the profit motive of these technology service providers. There are troubling doubts about the ownership of the metadata that will be generated from the glut of digital interactions through online courses. There is no clarity regarding whether the student-users, teachers get to own and control their data or will it remain with the educational platform. At the heart of online learning platforms like LMS is the diabolic intention to disrupt the aura of the classroom. The classroom lecture format aims to co-evolve the understanding of the teacher and student through interactions and ideas. It draws the teacher and the student into an intellectual entanglement that gets further circled with questions, doubts and contingent claims. Thus, the classroom is not just a physical space to synchronise teacher-student interactions but is literally ‘the’ place where learning as a social activity happens. On the contrary platforms like LMS designed to train and modulate an individual for the passive acquisition of skills makes learning devoid of critical thinking.
One of the much-expected fallout of introduction of LMS in Karnataka has been the erratic appointment of guest faculties. In the absence of regular teachers and reluctance of the successive governments to recruit new teachers, most of the government colleges excessively rely on guest faculties for effective functioning and completion of syllabi. Guest faculties are qualified teachers appointed on a temporary basis for a meagre salary. They have no social security or the legal claims for regularization of their service. This is made possible by relieving the guest faculties after every semester. They are made to apply and reappear for counselling after every semester. Thus, after every semester students have to spend anxious months where they have to go without classes. The department deliberately turns a blind eye and projects LMS as the substitute for classroom teaching. During these months of anarchy in the colleges, students lose interest in studies and go astray. The heads of the institution and regular teachers helplessly watch everything crumble. The students who opt to study in government colleges of Karnataka do so because of the affordable fee structure and scholarships of the welfare scheme. Most of them are first generation aspirants hailing from the deprived classes and the lower castes. When the system lets them down so badly, they have nowhere to look up.
Very few can brave this chaotic environment of the colleges and remain focused on their studies. Many quit and become part of growing gig economy- labour market characterized by temporary, short-term contract and freelance work. This is how haves have been able to retain the status-quo through ages. This is an ingenious path to preserve the structural class/caste-based society. Government colleges function as institutions that reproduce advantages and distinctions rather than being an engine of social and economic mobility. They reproduce social and cultural inequalities and invisibilise birth-based disadvantages.
LMS and erratic appointment of guest faculties in the state of Karnataka is also a mirror to tragic relegation of education as primarily a subject matter of implementation left to the bureaucracy rather than profoundly being a question of social justice. The general discourse around education remains largely technocratic. The pressing questions of what, why and for whom education exists are no longer seen as matters of collective deliberation or civic engagement but instead are delegated to class of administrators, “educationalist” and technical experts. Education in this model, is treated as a technical or managerial problem to be optimised for efficiency, rather than as a foundational site for shaping democratic values, addressing social injustices, or imagining more just futures.
Unless we discuss education widely and deeply at our workplaces, coffee shops, prime-time debates, election campaigns, legislative assemblies and parliaments, there is no respite for the students of government colleges. With no such mass awakening, the ruthless deception perpetrated by the Department of Collegiate Education and ruling dispensation will continue.
