Online Teaching and Learning: Man ki baat and Kaam ki baat

‘Yaar, maine Karim’s se baat kiya, woh khana pack nahi karte hain …’ his normally upbeat voice sounded a bit dejected this morning. 

Not too sure as to what was coming, I wondered what was I expecting to hear from my friend, Bist. Despite being diabetic and visually challenged, Bist certainly has a healthy appetite at 60 plus. Fiercely independent and pursuing a PhD from DU while holed up in a guest house, Bist, maintains an active life style. Rising by 3 AM, and always keen on catching up with an early morning stroll. During his walks, when greeted, Bist, always greets the other by name. With his ears attuned to an iPhone, he catches up with the national and international - news and views, gossip and banter, orders and requests … Hardly ever lost for words, albeit a flattering few in some languages, Bist is quite capable of looking after himself. 

‘I prefer to have just one nice meal a day … one meal, a day is quite sufficient, in fact, it has become my habit since my college days’, he loves to repeat.  

Not the one to gorge on food, Bist is quite careful with what he chooses to eat. Not averse to non-vegetarian fare, he prefers the vegetarian offerings, particularly when he is up and about. Most recently the highlight of his three month, January to March 2021, sojourn in Goa was marked by his regularity at a Kamat’s restaurant. 

Inoculated with the stipulated ‘two vaccine doses’, Bist looks at the pandemic as a good way to exercise extra caution. Confined to his room, hardly by design and accustomed by now, to collecting food from a nearby hostel, Bist, dearly misses his almost regular forays of heartily tucking into a non-vegetarian menu. Despite his visits to a number of places that serve non-vegetarian, Bist is hardly swayed by most of them, he however, wholeheartedly approves of old Delhi’s ‘Karim’. 

‘Yaar, aajkal, purani Dilli ke, iftaar evenings …’ he stops … and then asks ‘Koi, delivery services bhi hai?’, ‘not too sure …bhai’ I offer. 

After nearly two weeks, he calls again to say, ‘Maine, conveyance ke liye bhi arrange kiya … lekin yaar,  woh khana pack nahi karte hain …’. 

Bist wasn’t complaining about Karim’s Hotel, obviously his taste buds were yearning for more. Oh, am sure he’ll get by, despite his demanding taste buds, I told myself. I’d have let the conversation with Bist pass, just like the many others, if not for a passing remark to Poonam. 

‘Poonam, yeh Karim waale, khana pack kyun, nahi karte hain?’ I asked, she shot back a stare at me, apparently not cued into the conversation, I had had with Bist. After letting her in on what we were chatting about, 

‘Karim’s could earn quite a bit, these days, given the number of foodies they have cultivated …’ she said, almost to herself. 

Going by earlier and current reviews and the word of mouth recommendations, patrons, swear by the food served at Karim’s of old Delhi. Easy to imagine the number of patrons waiting to renew their visits and revisits to Karim’s.

‘Yeah …’ I agreed, even as she added … ‘but … there could be so many other reasons …’ 

‘What if …’ Poonam, asked, ‘Karim’s was actually conveying something … about the unique experience of eating at Karim’s …?’ 

‘What do you mean?” I shot back

‘Karim’s might be wanting to convey …’ she began tentatively, ‘that eating at Karim’s is just not only about the food out there …’ she continued, ‘it’s perhaps the complete experience, the visceral experience of eating out at Karim’s’ that they wish to celebrate and share with their patrons …’ she mused. It was hard to ignore her point. 

‘But, aren’t they losing out on enormous and quick gains … just pack their favourite dishes and sell … am sure lots of people would love to enjoy their Karim’s at home’, I prodded.

 

‘Ever tired, roasted corn on the cob, at SIM’s park in Coonoor, walking and shivering off the light rain and cold, chomping on a mouthful from the steaming cob…’ she asked, ‘as far as i’m concerned, I had lots of corn on the cob … in far too many places, that I care to recall … but they never tasted as sweet … was it the woody wet smells at SIM’s Park …or the fragrance of the roses there …’ she reminisced, and for good measure, continued,

‘Tried chicken at Aslam’s of purani Dilli … amid the wafting aromas of meat being cooked in the multiple ways known best to the culinary adepts at Purani Dilli …?’ 

This was hard to contest, ‘cos no matter how ever carefully you brought back ‘packed stuff’ from ‘purani dilli’ … away from their ‘natural environs’ they always tasted quite different at home. Perhaps, that’s why we love to sit back and enjoy the gladiatorial onslaughts of the Gordon Ramsays and his ilk as they mercilessly eviscerate the culinary wannabes from fobbing off their patrons their legitimate privilege to the visceral experience of dining out. 

Could the envisaged, ‘National Professional Standards for Teachers’ and the, ‘National Mission for Mentoring’ in NEP 2020, double up as the Gordon Ramsays to challenge our educational endeavours in the oft touted New India?

Am not sure, exactly when, but it suddenly struck me … could there be some parallels to the recent adventurism of online teaching and learning that NEW India has frog marched into - courtesy the Covid 19 pandemic and NEP 2020 enthusiasts. Even as we waddle along, almost a year into this unplanned and ill-prepared mode of engaging with young hearts and minds … what would it take for our Institutions of learning and some of bestowed Eminence to declare along with Karim, ‘Hum khana pack nahi karte jain …’ or more appropriately ‘Hum adhigam pack nahi karte hain …’  

When you come to think of it … how many ‘starred’ hotels actually pack their meals for delivery? 

‘Oh, who could ever afford the fare at those ‘starred’ hotels?’ one could counter, 

‘Thank God … for the numerous places that still ‘pack and deliver’ …’ another sighs. 

And the debate goes on, bound to lead up to a lot of hungry people, most off to grab another bite or dial up swiggy. 

The penchant of the Indian mindset to ‘rehash’ and ‘jugaad’ continues to provide a fertile ground for the indiscriminate mushrooming of online teaching workshops and seminars.  While online teaching and learning, promise access, delivery and convenience …  do they actually make up for the inalienable visceral experience that accompanies teaching and learning? What was / is our investment in attending to the proposition of online teaching and learning and to what the proposition of online teaching and learning is about? What were / are our parameters for adequately factoring in the hopes, the fears, the promises, the threats – of those who have a stake in the outcome. 

Online teaching in the hands of untrained and under-motivated teachers soon regresses to an inordinate emphasis on ‘content and teacher-centred teaching’ - the blight of educational systems, the world over. Corcoran (1999) argued that pedagogical goals are found spread out along a spectrum terminating on one end with educational goals and on the other end with indoctrinational goals. Education is something that is done by the student. Indoctrination is something that is done by the teacher. Education has to do with how to think; indoctrination has to do with what to think. Education brings something out of the student; indoctrination puts something into the student. Today, where content and delivery are the privileged modes of online learning transactions, it appears that New India’s education system aided and abetted by NEP 2020 have lost sight of the raging battle on conflicts internal to the social imagination of our times - eg: ideology versus utopia, myth versus critique, tradition versus reason, modernity versus post-modernity and have chosen instead to wage quixotic wars to fudge data in attempts to ramp up literacy rates and GERs. Where online teaching is serenaded as the knight in shining armour in the battle to infuse indoctrination for social engineering, the role of the teacher becomes even more relevant. The best we can trust our best teachers to do is to try to propound views that are worth trying out, worth trying to verify. A new meaning to the old saying: ‘Trust, but verify’. Pedagogy in general and reflexive pedagogy in particular always invites the teacher and the taught to ‘trust and verify’.

When Karim’s refuse to ‘pack their delectables for delivery’ even for, Bist my visually challenged friend, I wonder whether it is a question of their ‘Man ki baat’ or ‘Kaam ki baat’ ? While the former seduces one to blindly ‘trust’ the latter entreats that we ‘verify’. The educational imagination calls for a continuous verification. The visceral experience of the educational imagination is too precious to squander away to the whims and fancies of a neatly packaged chintzy zombie zoom experience. 

Chris Morris backing the BCCI's decision to postpone IPL 2021 ... said “We know the situation in the country is very bad to continue a cricket …” what would it take for our Teaching and Learning Institutions to declare, “We know the educational situation in the country is very bad to continue our mindless online teaching and learning adventurism …”