Hemantha Kalam - 66 'Learnings of a teacher'

Sometime during 1984, when I was specialising in Materials Management by taking lessons in the evenings from University of Madras, India, my professor in management Dr. Jaigopal asked me to take a class for the rest of my classmates and explain to them the management aspects practiced at my work place. At the end, not only did my classmates, but also my professor appreciated my session. That became my first lesson to teach and the seed was sown for my teaching.

Then, in 2002, I had an opportunity to address, in a class room mode, the general and senior managers across the country of the security department of Reserve Bank of India, on the importance of having electronic surveillance fixed at vantage positions of the branches of the bank. That session was loved by all the participants as also by my boss.

It was like GOD beckoning and bequeathing me with an option of teaching! Having been born into that class of people in India, whose profession and dharma was to learn and teach, I am happy that at the dusk of my life I am getting an opportunity to do exactly the same – assimilate and disseminate knowledge. From 2006, there has been no looking back and today over 60% of my professional time is spent on teaching various aspects; out of knowledge and experience gathered over four decades and no need to emphasise, I am quite passionate about that. Teach'em a lesson, wilya? :-)

So, in the middle of 2019, when a meeting was arranged between the director of a business school associated with an age old highly reputed educational institution and myself, I did not hesitate much to accept the opportunity provided by him to teach. It was an institution where I failed to get an admission for my college education some five decades ago, due to their high and ‘my poor’ standards. Apart from being proud, I also felt it paradoxical that today they are asking me to impart lessons on an important subject in that very institution.

I am to take five sessions of Law on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), on Saturdays, across four hours for each session making the total course 20 hours, preparation time another twenty 20 hours, travel time (the place took a commute of about 45 minutes each way) about 8 hours, question paper setting for an interim exam and a final exam, evaluating answer papers of the students who took the exams, all put together, worked out to about 80 hours of work.

With a lot of excitement I went to the first class 10 minutes ahead of time, sacrificing my morning sleep. It was the first time that I was stepping on to the campus and I was awestruck for the neatly maintained colonial buildings and the gardens in the campus. And then I began waiting. Students started sauntering into the class after about 30 minutes. The coming in continued till the first break which was two hours after the starting of the class. At the end of any day, the students were never more than 10 in the class, while I was given to understand that the total enrollment were 24 students.

So the classes limped and in between an interim exam was conducted. Interestingly I found, from the papers sent to me for evaluation, that several students cheated by copying from my presentations. So while announcing the results, I succinctly put forward that CSR Managers are to be highly ethical and such behaviour is not acceptable. They (well, whoever was present in the class on that day), all nodded.

The final exam was to be conducted in the month of March 2020 and thanks to the continuous lock-down due to COVID-19 (Corona Virus), the exam got postponed several times and finally the institution felt that the exams will have to be conducted  online and from the students’ homes/hostels/premises.

Question paper would be mailed to students’ email IDs and the exam would have to be taken within 2 hours and written answer sheets to be scanned and mailed within 30 minutes after the end of the specific examination, to the institution.

After the exam was over, the institution mailed me the papers in a zipped file, for evaluation. This came along with a roster, where the names of all the 24 students enrolled for the programme were let known to me for the first time after my completing my part. I noted that 22 students took the exam and two were absent for this too. There were so many names to which I could not put a face to. Rank new names were there.

The papers gave me a ringside view of how ingenious our dear students are.

There was one student who wrote sentences that went from 0 to 150 degrees and I have to incline and recline my neck to read through, developing a neck pain while I am already suffering from spondylitis.

Having once been bitten by the copycats, this time I had set questions in a jumbled manner so that they will need to take time to search for answers while copying. But then, such gimmicks would be easily tackled by my dear students. They, apparently, kept all my PPT presentations in a chronological order and searched for questions based on the presentations and answered in a jumbled manner. Now it became a task for me to find the keys while evaluating. And I thought, what a smart alec I was. How naïve and innocent I could be?

The question paper had two sections. The simple questions fetching two marks each were 10 and all 10 needed to be answered. The second part needed some writing as each question fetched them 16 marks (Institution’s standard). So a choice of taking in five out of a total seven questions was given.

Many students smartly tackled the big ones first and attempted the easier ones later.

After going through two or three answer papers, I could notice a pattern emerging. Excepting for three or four students all the rest virtually copied word to word, comma to comma whatever was given in the presentations, leaving me in a predicament to disallow or allow. If I disallow it would tantamount to saying that my own answers were not correct. If I allow, almost everyone was getting a ‘E’ or ‘D’. Rank new comers, unknown to me and those who never attended even one of my classes could  also get an ‘E’ or a ‘D’.

Ironically, those who really tried to write on their own could get only ‘A+’ or ‘A’. And then there were those dolts who could not even copy properly or in time.

I strongly suspect that all or some of the participating students must have, conveniently, fixed a Google Duo or Zoom or such app for a meeting among themselves and comfortably discussed the answers. Some answer papers were so identical to each other, even in the sequence of the question/answer numbers.

There were those smarter guys who attempted only those questions that could make them pass and took it easy for the rest.

Finally, at the end of the exercise, I noted that almost all not only passed but with flying colours. It also left me with a few questions.

1) If getting all the students just pass is the intention, why waste time in all this farce? Certificates could have been simply given off making every one’s life that much easier. After all, it is a known fact that many would not remember this skill and anyway they would be invoking that all pervasive new god ‘Google’ for every one of their needs.

2) The students are of mixed nature whose age must be ranging from the early twenties to late forties. While some of them are fresh students just out of college or still in college but doing the course for an additional qualification, there also are several working executives. Sadly the copying was more intensive among the executives. Now CSR is also about business ethics. If the students themselves are not ethical, what ethics are they going to practice at work or insist with implementing partners?

The Hindus believe that the time of the earth has been measured in terms of four Yugas, each signified by the amount of Dharma (loosely can be interpreted as justice; at least for this blog’s purpose) prevalent in that time. The first one was Kruta Yuga or Satya Yuga where dharma was 100%. Then came Tretaa Yuga where dharma was 75%. This was followed by Dwaapara Yuga where dharma was 50%. Now, the present time is supposed to be Kali Yuga where only 25% dharma is supposed to be prevalent.

So, this is how it is going to be? If so, am I right in conceding to teaching to follow my intended professional dharma?

What do you think? Pray, tell me!

So long until the next one! 

Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi (Sanskrit), Thanks (English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado (Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic), Shukriya (Urdu), Bohoma Sthuthiyi (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai),Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino), Tack (Swedish), Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian) and Tenkyu (Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea).

Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy

Chennai, India