‘Choice’ and ‘flexibility’ beget change into the present buzzwords in academic reforms and policy documents. All over the country, educators are focusing — greater than ever earlier than — on catering to the particular particular person wants and aspirations of students. The mature one-measurement-suits-all model is giving technique to an reach that values the differ of pupil aptitudes and pursuits.
The present paradigm encourages more than one pathways, allowing students to pursue combos of programs and careers that align with their passions and attainable. A science predominant can now minor in tune, as an instance — a shift symbolic of the switch from trainer-centric to learner-centric training. The focus has expanded beyond disciplinary boundaries, embracing multi-disciplinary and even transdisciplinary approaches. The reason is definite: discovering out confined to a single self-discipline risks setting apart students from related fields, whereas unpleasant-disciplinary glance affords a greater and fuller perspective of the arena.
Nonetheless, when such beliefs are imposed upon a inflexible academic framework adore ours, the resolution equipped is Hobson’s resolution — resolution in name perfect. Trainer workload, common pedagogy, unlucky pupil to trainer ratios, and out of date evaluate programs conspire to chop flexibility to a mere paper promise.
The phantasm of resolution
The introduction of the Selection-Based Credit and Semester Diagram (CBCSS) in Kerala in 2009 became once heralded as a landmark reform supposed to produce students more freedom. In theory, credits had been to reflect weekly instructing hours. In note, the map accommodated anomalies: a four-credit route might shuffle for five hours per week, whereas a two-credit route might require merely four hours. Such inconsistencies had been quietly passed over to preserve the phantasm of freedom. Furthermore, the so-known as buffet of picks had been infrequently picks within the true sense. Past a home of obligatory core programs, students had been equipped a slight resolution of ‘electives’, most ceaselessly chosen by the departments themselves. The primary-advertised “originate route” — a two-credit paper within the fifth semester equipped to students of moderately about a departments — became once the true semblance of resolution. Thus, no topic the rhetoric, valid academic freedom remained a miles away dream.
The identical rhetoric of flexibility another time took centre stage, with the open of the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUGP) in Kerala in 2024, as mandated by the National Education Protection, 2020. The present structure allowed students to swap majors and minors, theoretically improving autonomy. Yet, now not like earlier curriculum adjustments, this reform demanded deep structural adjustments, making it extremely now not easy. The mature thought of lecturers delivering lectures in fastened classrooms gave technique to students shifting across departments looking for honest programs and lecturers.
It goes with out announcing that structural adjustments pose insurmountable challenges. A case in level became once a clause within the university laws of Kerala prohibiting students from selecting minors from allied disciplines. While it became once intended to advertise interdisciplinary discovering out, it inadvertently hindered specialisation.
Disciplines adore Commerce and Purposeful English, which had beforehand allowed aligned minors, stumbled on this rule counterproductive — a restriction masquerading as resolution.
Need for systemic adjustments
For any reform to prevail, systemic adjustments are obligatory. Within the route of the author’s tenure as Chairperson of the Board of Experiences in English at the University of Calicut in 2017, two key enhancements had been launched.
The first became once a talent-oriented question paper for the route on Conversation Talents. The mature layout, stuffed with essay questions about theories and models, failed to check true communication ability. It became once modified with a purely assignment-based mostly mostly paper designed to assess true abilities. Yet even this substitute all of sudden met bureaucratic hurdles: permission for an accompanying solution booklet became once denied on “confidentiality” grounds, forcing evaluators to flip with out shatter between question papers (which carried greater than twice the resolution of questions of its earlier counterpart) and solution sheets.
The 2nd innovation became once a route titled ‘Introducing Literature’ — a fingers-on, principle-driven paper designed to educate read literature in preference to merely what to read. As a substitute of memorising texts and answering questions about the basis of prescribed texts, students had been taught literary ideas and had been required to clarify unseen passages from linguistic, elegant and political angles. Paradoxically, this radical step met more resistance from lecturers than students, as it demanded a shift from common the map in which to principle-based mostly mostly instructing, instructing us the valuable lesson that trainer preparedness and coaching need to were ensured before rolling out the reforms.
Facing ground realities
This day, the FYUGP aspires to designate undergraduate training more talent-based mostly mostly, analysis-oriented, and self ample, with a modest 10% autonomy given to lecturers for framing syllabi wherein each and each trainer can pitch in their modern solutions. Yet, at the ground level, classrooms and methodology dwell largely unchanged. One can perfect reap the implications if ample trainer coaching is geared up, if class sizes are smaller, and if analysis had been to be integrated into instructing workloads.
Abida Farooqui is a Senate Member of the University of Calicut, and Professor and Head, P.G and Research Division of English, Govt. Arts & Science Faculty, Kondotty
