Under the guidelines of the National Education Policy, 2020, several institutions now offer ‘multi-disciplinary’ courses which have been designed in accordance with the policy’s vision of transforming the classroom into a space where educators “develop social, physical, intellectual, emotional, and moral capacities of human beings in an integrated manner.”
It is a noble and ambitious goal. But I do wonder if educators are prepared to wrangle with the full extent of the implications of such an aim.
The institution where I teach was one of the first to implement the policy. Each department now offers a substantial litany of courses from which students of all departments are welcome to choose the one they wish to sample. As a result, I now get to discuss cultural studies with over 80 undergraduate students, all from different various disciplines, for 45 minutes every week. The experience has been edifying, to say the least.
One of the first things I do at the start of the course is to point out to the students that, despite their varied interests, they have certain things in common. I begin by asking them if they think the work they do as budding academics is political. Usually, the answer is a unanimous ‘no.’ I ask them about the syllabi they study, about the research they wish to do, about their goals after they graduate, about the reasons why they have chosen to study that specific subject, and not any other. And then I ask them to think about these opinions they have formed and the knowledge they have acquired – to examine its shape and form, to figure out how they came by these opinions, or to know the things they know, to question the choices they are offered, the systems they rely on, the classroom they have come to think of as a ‘neutral’ space. And as we ask, and ask, and ask some more, they come to see that everything is political.
As academicians accustomed to doing research, we are well aware that the field we work in, the questions we choose to ask, the funding we seek, the institutions to which we affiliate ourselves, are all deeply inflected by our own politics and the politics that shape the various structures we both question and depend upon. But if that should be the case, should teaching not also be recognised as being equally political? Should we not understand that our aims in the classroom, the methods we use to teach, the readings we prescribe, the syllabi we design, and the ‘personal baggage’ we bring to the teacher’s desk – each of these is shaped by our personal politics? Why, then, do we criticise ‘bringing politics into the classroom’? Why do we not acknowledge that the classroom has always already been political? Why do we avoid busting the myth of ‘neutrality’ in education?
The classroom, a peer tells me, ought to be a happy place. I understand what they mean by it. The classroom is where you learn, discover, fall in love with knowledge.
Another colleague tells me, the lecturer should not allow bias in their classroom, their lectures should remain neutral and ‘objective.’ But critical pedagogy recognises the fallacy of such a demand – educating and learning is invariably, endlessly, delightfully political.
The very claim for neutrality is itself a political stance – one which is constructed by a specific understanding of the job of the teacher within an institution. Permitting ourselves to take stock of our own approaches such that we recognise their political implications – and asking uncomfortable questions, such as ‘which parties benefit from this stance?’ and ‘what sorts of questions do we invite into and eliminate from the curriculum by orienting ourselves a certain way?’ – is imperative if we are to impart honest learning. It is what makes teaching such a potent tool for change – it is why becoming an educator comes with a great deal of terribly frightening power.
To choose to raise unsettling questions, to choose to show students how to read between the lines, to teach them to smell out the relations of power than shape the world, themselves, their relationship with their teacher and with the classroom – all of these have the potential to effect real growth. It opens up minds, helps students care, helps them see the classroom and the work they do in it as part of a bigger world outside.
The happy classroom is a myth we nurture to bar its doors to the Debbie Downers, the buzzkills, the ‘activist-types’ of the teaching world. But we must keep in mind that it is ignorance that is the source of bliss.
To know is to be made uncomfortable. To care is to feel ‘negative’ emotions – anger, despair, rage, and fear.
Some time ago, I read about Sara Ahmed’s concept of the feminist killjoy. The killjoy is a person who is the equivalent of a death’s head at a feast, someone who dampens the mood by broaching ‘improper’ subjects, someone who ‘can’t take a joke’,’ someone too contrary, too angry, someone who asks too many questions. The killjoy is disruptive. The killjoy is brave. To be a killjoy in the classroom is to confront unhappy discussions. It is to teach the student to see through all that they think and know. It is to help the student learn what it means to be a responsible academic, a responsible human, an ethical killjoy.
It is to turn the classroom into a safe space where the student feels welcome to dissent, to ask, to poke and take apart all that is held to be impervious to doubt, considered natural, a way of the world. Creating an effective classroom means being willing to raise discomfiting, unsettling questions about the unhappiness in the world we call our own. Such a process can be as wonderful as it is unnerving, as the student begins to see differently, ask questions, learn their own power, and put it into ethical practice. Of course, the labour that goes into creating such spaces is immense – educators have to be equipped to strike the right balance such that teaching does not become a form of moral preaching.
The point is to help students learn to use the tools that will help them take the world apart and put it back together in new, socially conscious ways. We have to try, as best as we can, not to allow the classroom to devolve into a purely contentious space, where the student no longer feels safe. To become a killjoy educator is to do quite the opposite – it is the heavy duty of being able to mediate uncomfortable discussions without causing harm. It is to ensure each student feels secure enough to become killjoys themselves, to make others uncomfortable with difficult questions, to constantly see through the status-quo. This also means that as educators, we must be willing to forego the comfort and security of speaking from the irreproachable pulpit – we must be willing to make ourselves uncomfortable first.
Sayantani Mukhopadhyay is assistant professor, Department of English, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous).
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