Rizwan calls on his teacher from father’s not-Smartphone(call it lazy-phone) to validate Ahmad’s intimation of newly initiated ZOOMclass humbly stating his ‘inability’ to attend e-class. Obviously, Rizwanneither did nor could receive ‘invitation’. Students of a ‘Higher Secondary’ inSrinagar, both these keen boys regularly attend school to study Humanitieswhich they chose reluctantly for ‘sciences are expensive’. E-class multipliedRizwan’s worries as he requested teacher to bear his absence for ‘couple ofweeks’ till he either purchases, or arranges Smartphone. He may miss the’privilege’ of E-classes, and like-him thousands of students stand far behindthe ‘honour’ of Smart gadgets necessary for alternate learning. As I witnesse-teaching of this senior secondary teacher, known/unknown attending studentsare only a minority percentage who get a ‘Home Delivery Commodity’ (–education)through not-lazy means (using antonym). An immediate puzzle: Who is ‘invited’?And a pertinent question: Are poor invited at all? The ‘puzzle’ and the’question’ are not same; the former does not evoke easy yes-to-all and thelatter does wrench us to uncomfortable social terrain –the ugly Other.
Who is invited?
Who do you ask to this question –who is invited? – is itselfa puzzle. Ask anyone (I mean ‘bosses’) of feasibility, they retort back: ordersof the boss. Bosses turn out to be ‘unending’. It reminds a classical characterof Joseph K., in Franz Kafka’s The Trial, who is caught in unstable and evershifting spaces for the difficulties of settling a clash between accusations ofcrime and firm implorations of innocence. To his unchosen circumstances, hefinds no central authority he could appeal to examine the ground of accusationof crime and fairness of his claims of innocence from modern city streets totheatres, minions to bureaucrats, and legible hoardings to unreadablerepresentations. Leave The Trail including also the chain of bosses on shelf of’class-dignity’, who does a teacher invite to the e-class?
In a Disney dreamland situation: All the students. In a realworld unequal situation, yes-to-all is not an honest answer. I put forth fewpoints to see what ‘lies’ are hidden in so-called ‘invitation’. First, astudent having access to Internet and, more importantly, having a compatiblegadget is invited. The basic assumption, for a universal education, is that everystudent, or parent, has an uninterrupted access to Internet and each student,or parent, possesses a resourceful gadget for the same. It is not only anunfounded but a dangerous assumption. In an orthodox class analysis, it refersto the state of ‘being’ resourceful and ‘having’ a thing ‘enabling’ a studentof ‘doing’ an activity. ‘Being’, ‘Having’ and ‘Doing’ are not, however, always congruent(it needs a separate space). Leaving the complex interface of these threeaside, how many Indians, or for that matter Students of ‘Poor Rural India’, areprivileged to ‘own’ the access to e-classes generally? And in Jammu andKashmir, as the Rizwan’s case illustrates, the claims of universality aresimply usual confident ‘tricks’. Higher education has a capacity to usedifferent mediums to advertise the ‘innovative steps’ of e-learning andteaching very often overshadows the domain of primary education which,constitutionally speaking, is a fundamental right. Imagine a Headmaster of aGovernment Primary School deciding to follow the ‘trend’, as they call it, tosend an invitation to a parent for e-class of his/her ward! Imagination has nolimit, but this case will substantially teach the one. We are back to ‘being’,’having’ and ‘doing’ as a distinguished social class.
What is being invited?
Second, co-relatedly to who is being invited is: ‘what’ isbeing invited? The latter is related to former, but is critically different.Simply put: the Administrator (as Software application recognizes and projectsteacher as ‘Admin.’) invites either ’email’, or a mobile number, for a’meeting’ (as ZOOM does it) on a particular date and time to a virtual room. Adouble transformation happens: (a) teacher (the invitee) becomes anadministrator and the student (the invited) is now a subordinate ‘member’called to a meeting; and (b) the very source is reaching out to the seeker to’impart’ knowledge. I would reserve the transformation of knowledge for being adeeper question deserving a very serious enquiry, rather I am interested to seethe change in the relationship between the teacher and the student. I do notmean to suggest that a teacher is reduced to a ‘postman’ who carries aninvitation to a given address of the students, albeit online. Rather what is athand is this: e-mail ID is a data obtained by the Administrator (read,teacher), the invitation is a data received by the member (student/parent), andthe communication medium is working information. The virtual class/meeting roomdoes not exist, speaking in the material sense. The very space of, if we dareto call it, teaching-learning is the mere information rather an actualmediation which is central to ‘pursuit of truth’ (a conventional goal ofknowledge). If knowledge is a different enterprise, chatroom ought to bedistinguished from a classroom. We, the social scientists, were always toldthat classroom is the ‘space of deliberation’ and an ‘integral component’ ofhuman emancipation. To our friends in natural sciences, labs were ‘sacred’spaces in the discovery of the truth. If the boundary between chatroom andclassroom is blurring, then the very questions on the nature of knowledge (notKnowledge written in upper case) become binding for further investigation.
What is its Fallout?
Certain disciplines are inaccessible to underprivilegedclass and they reluctantly switch over to hitherto ‘cheaper’ subjects, likeRizwan and Ahmad did. In a way, social patronage of certain knowledges groundedin the social hierarchy of society excludes the bottom layers from the dominantknowledge system. In a scenario that is challenging to all like the presentglobal pandemic (Covid-19) does not challenge all in the end. The thrown-outsare thrown further away.
This very popular initiative of e-class aims at’universalization’ of not-education, but Internet and the gadgets. It impliesthat the ‘poor’ who are likely to face the most of the economic brunt of thisglobal pandemic would be required, if they dream of education at all, to pooltheir assets for education of their children, and forget about livelihood. AsEconomist Abhijit Banerjee, the Nobel Laureate (2019), has adequately proven inhis works that the ‘Asset’ poverty is more complicated than ‘Income’ poverty asis the case in India. Even the Income curve is turning away from the BottomFifty percent. The average increase in income of ordinary workers is roughly 2percent since 2006, and the richest 1 percent bagged 82% and 73% of the wealthgenerated in India (Oxfam Reports, 2018). In such a radical inequality scenario,the e-classes are likely to deprive more the already squeezed classes of thesociety. It would multiply the insecurities of downtrodden as library books,critical discussion and human engagement is replaced by a ‘life-less’ screen.Would this new technology-based creation of “Other” be a happening of insecuresocial formations, is a question that stares us for a face-off!
The author teaches at Department of Political Science, University of Kashmir. Views are personal. The names of the students are not real.