Bureaucratisation of Education

When I was a school going child, the only authority I knew in the school was the Principal or the Headmaster. The Principal, aided by the Vice-Principal, epitomised all the powers that were to be exercised in running the school, from caning and disciplining the students, decisions regarding admissions, upkeep of the playgrounds and gardens, cleanliness of the campus, time-tabling, examination and vacation dates to meeting the parents.

?In the last two to three decades or so, schools have come to be owned by "trusts". So, now we have a Chairman of the trust, a vice-chairman, a Secretary, a Treasurer and numerous trustees. The poor Principal is now placed so low in the hierarchy that he is probably just a trifle above his pupils. Same goes for colleges thousands of which have sprung up every few kilometres as one travels in the country side. Of course, the trusts are just a facade for ostensible "no-profit" venture that these seats of learning pretend to be. All the donations, building funds, development funds, proprietary sale of books and stationary to students from in-house counters and all other non-tuition payments form the real motive of these trusts, which only fatten their members and line their pockets.??

I was once invited as the Chief Guest to a famous engineering college in Salem, Tamil Nadu. The Principal himself came to invite me and I felt honoured to be visited by him. But, when I was seated on the stage, the Principal was nowhere to be seen. I had the company of the trustees and some other spurious dignitaries. The programme started and I was surprised to find the Principal getting up from a corner seat come up and touch the feet of the Chairman, the Secretary, the Treasurer and a few other members in succession. This was a shocking let down for me. I had always envisioned a Principal as the supreme authority in a college. As the programme progressed, it became clear to me that the whole exercise was a show of sycophancy, subservience and obsequiousness. The trustees were the reigning deities, who were paid obeisance by one an all, the Principal, the Heads of Departments and College students alike. In the melee the Chief Guest was also forgotten. The Principal, upon whose visit I had felt honoured, was merely a messenger of the trustees after all!

I remember my days in school and college, where the Principal and senior teachers were role models and symbols of dignity and probity. But, here I saw the Principal and HODs in a role so diminished that students would probably have no reverence towards them. They would all learn to stand in awe of non-academic authorities. I have, likewise, seen some schools that are run on "corporate" lines, many of which love to call themselves XYZ International School. We see a Managing Director, an Executive Director and a few Deputy Directors in them. Each one of them have office chambers in the school building and when they come avisiting, the Principal is seen running errands for them or flitting in and out of the hallowed chambers attempting to look like obedient junior schoolboys. And, when the MD himself visits, they line up small students from the gate up to the portico showering flower petals on him. In my school the Principal's office was a much feared or a much respected place depending on the type of student one was. ?There was absolutely no authority above him. Today the Principal stands probably at number seven in the rank.

The school and college management has taken faithfully after the government or corporate bureaucracy. Teaching and learning are incidental and the main purpose seems to be massaging the ego of hierarchy that has been unnecessarily created. Money making and its laundering continues as the hidden agenda.

?Needless to say, I never visited any such Institution again.?