In this blog post, Pranusha Kulkarni, an Assistant Professor at Tamil Nadu National Law School, Tiruchirappalli describes the problems with legal education in India. 

This opinion article is not directed at any one university or one set of students and/or teachers. These observations are for the majority which defines our education system, thus barring the exceptional minority. Whatever I am quoting below, I myself have been there and done that as a student (even when I used to be considered as one of the best). And, unfortunately, I am now seeing the exact same thing happening with my students. I am not casting aspersions against any one set of students, and especially not on the students I am currently teaching. I was a student myself just six months ago, and I completely understand how students behave. (for example, even I used to keep blaming the elusive “system” and would feel demotivated when I would score less marks) But now when I stand on the other side, I realise that it’s very easy to blame. As students, the one thing we do best is BLAME. Blame the university, blame our teachers, blame the curriculum, blame everything around us. That’s all we do. Do we try finding internal motivation to push our limits? NO. Do we try changing ourselves first, instead of pointing fingers at others? NO. Thus, the reason why our education system is in shambles is not ONLY because of the teachers. It’s equally, or more so, because of the students. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam once said, “A student can learn more from a mediocre teacher, than he can learn from the best teacher”. This greatly explains the onus that lies on the student, over and above that that lies on the teacher. By saying this, I am not disregarding the importance of having good teachers. All I am saying is, despite having the best of teachers, chances are high that a student remains distracted and demotivated all through his classes. Motivation can never be instilled from outside. I hope the readers of this article get inspiration and not negative vibes from this article.

Today I completed my first semester as a law teacher. It’s a great feeling. I do not know how much my students could learn from me, for people often receive only what they want to take. But this process of teaching them has definitely helped me learn certain things about being a student. It’s not easy to be a student in a system which is built to judge you, rather than to mould you and to bring the best in you. It is not easy to be a student when life is so fast-paced and labyrinthine that many students get lost in it, because there’s no one to guide them. It is not easy to be a student, when your self-worth is decided by the marks you score.

Every time I read for my classes, memories of my under graduate days – memories of those heady days, when I used to use the rhetoric of “marks aren’t everything” to justify my laziness and distractedness – keep flashing in my mind. It helps me empathise with my students now. It’s very difficult to comprehend the vastness of law as a young adult, is what I feel. I have also experienced that with age, law becomes easier to understand. Maybe it’s in the nature of this discipline that some amount of life experience is needed to fully assimilate its depth.

In the course of this semester, wherein I was involved in teaching, evaluating answer books and projects and setting question papers, each of these activities has taught me what’s going wrong with our education system. One of the main things I have realised is – there are very few students who are genuinely interested in enriching their knowledge. A majority of them just want two things: marks and attendance.

Marks, marks, and more of marks. What for? They don’t want to fail. Do they deserve the marks they are expecting to get? They don’t care. Are they confident that if they score well, they will succeed in life? I don’t think so. Will an employer hire them just because they are toppers? Obviously No. So who taught these students to be so slavish towards marks? What made them forego the chase towards excellence? What has made them so intellectually lazy?

I think we as teachers have failed them. Let us not get into the rhetoric of “the system has failed them”. The system is nothing but them and us. Teachers who use marks and attendance as “lollipops” to demand attention and false respect, teachers who do not encourage curiosity in students, teachers who only want students to be vessels to be filled rather than lights to be lighted, teachers who make students believe that scoring high is the be all and end all of getting an education, have failed the students.

On the other hand, there are students who are nice to teachers just so that their internal marks are decent. Rampant plagiarism has become an accepted standard of practice in submitting projects, and fighting for marks with such shoddy ethical standards, has become a part of this game called education. Has education become so base? If this was not so bad, legal research in India wouldn’t be in such pathetic condition today. There is definitely something wrong with all the stakeholders involved.

What’s wrong with the teachers?

First things first. The method of teacher recruitment in India (through a competitive exam called UGC NET), is flawed. Just because someone has great subject knowledge, doesn’t mean s/he would be able to teach students. Secondly, all that UGC NET does is, testing the memory power of the prospective teacher. It is nowhere concerned with the teaching capability of the individual concerned. Because of this, not all teachers who get permanent teaching positions are qualified enough to teach students. Some may not bother whether the students are understanding what they are teaching, and some may not care to go the extra mile in getting a thorough understanding of the subject they are teaching, because they get complacent with the fact that theirs is a sarkari naukri and they wouldn’t lose it unless there is a disciplinary action against them (Reputed universities are an exception, but most of them are inaccessible to the vast majority in India due to the high fee structure). Clubbed with this is the fact that teaching has ceased to be a calling these days, due to which it has just become another job which pays you decently enough. People bribing universities to get a permanent teaching positions is not uncommon. As a result of this corruption in the education system, where the input itself suffers, the output is not going to be that great either.

What’s wrong with the students?

Students today are a distracted lot. Some say it’s an effect of neo-liberal thought. Many students do not know why they are doing what they are doing. They are just going with the flow. This attitude might be considered by some as fruitful, in that it provides opportunities to explore the world and oneself, but it can be dangerous too. A ship sailing without a destination is, by all means, doomed.

Students today are also a complacent lot. Millennials as they are, not used to hardships that life throws at them, they are just not used to something called “hard work”. Smart work is the in thing they say. And what does this so called “smart work” consist of? Shortcuts, shortcuts and loads of shortcuts. And history has stood testimony to the fact that all the great souls of the world became what they are because they did hard work and not the so called “smart work”, because there’s nothing smart in “smart work”. For example, Cut-copy-paste and Google have ruined the meaning of “research projects” in India. They are sheer waste of valuable paper and money. Also, a waste of time for the teacher who is supposed to “evaluate” hundreds of such copy-pasted junk. I call them junk because there is hardly any research involved in these so called “research projects”. Rhetoric truisms, or pages of text books are reproduced in the name of research. Yes, there might be exceptional students working really hard and trying to bring in the much needed originality, but the minority doesn’t define the system. The mediocre majority does. So shouldn’t we as teachers motivate the interested students to further push their limits and try to be their best version? Shouldn’t we as important stakeholders in the education system, create a research atmosphere in our universities?

Sadly, the importance of research is not understood well by the students. They do not understand that, whatever career path they choose for themselves, research and analytical skills are the foundational skills based on which other specialised skills are built. Googling is NOT a part of this research & analytical skillset (it can only give you a primary introduction to a subject, unless you are using the search engine to access scholarly works or legal databases). Frankly speaking, even I as a student, read very less case-laws and mind you, it’s not going to help.

Effects of Lack of Research Culture in India

How many of us, as students or teachers, genuinely strive towards encouraging a thriving academic culture in our respective universities? How many of us as teachers put our foot down when students come negotiating for marks for their average performance? How many of us as students are really hungry for knowledge? We repeating that marks don’t define us, and we ourselves hankering after marks is a dirty oxymoron we are living with.

Why do you think India is lagging behind in the area of research? Yes, let’s start the blame game. Lack of funds, lack of resources, lack of “good” faculty, blah blah blah. Does a law student need funds to do a well-researched project? If he is really motivated enough, can’t he put in a genuine effort to develop his skills, by reading books?

Hawala Scheme of Research Projects

We are well aware of the hawala scheme through which ill gotten money is smuggled across legal systems to evade taxation. Similarly, there is an inter-university and inter-batch hawala scheme of project exchange going on in India, in the name of “developing research acumen” among the students. Because of a lack of centralised project submission portal, teachers easily get duped, and also, because of lack of strict evaluation parameters to check plagiarism, the students get away with such malicious submissions, and such students who never bother to be attentive in classes/ understand the subject, get a strong sense of entitlement when it comes to resuming the blame game!

What’s the Solution?

Being associated with law for more than five years, I have realised one thing. No law can change human behaviour. A person changes his/her behaviour because they internally realise that whatever they are doing isn’t right. Law can just act as a catalyst to this realization, which realization in the end may or may not dawn upon the person concerned. Same is the role of a teacher. As a teacher I have realised that, I cannot get every student motivated to study or to get interested in the subject, how much ever I try to do so. It is adults we are dealing with, and there is a strong sense of self-agency in all adults. Adults do things only if they want to do it. Thus, there are always going to be those actively disassociated students who do not want to study, for whatever reasons. We as teachers can either try motivating them to study, or can ignore them. And as far as students are concerned, they would go a long way if they develop some humility and curiosity towards everything and everyone around them, instead of being slavish towards marks and attendance. And it’s high time for students everywhere to realise that good marks don’t guarantee happiness or success or even a well-paying job in life. Excellence and internal satisfaction do.

And as far as teacher recruitment is concerned, it would be great if demonstrable teaching ability is tested together with UGC NET. Also, it would augur well for the cause of education if universities are less commercialised and bureaucratised, and more importance is given to creativity rather than toeing the line. Administrators need to stop moral policing and should be open to diversity among students and their culture. We cannot have dictatorship in the name of discipline. In fact, a disciplined mind can never be creative. Channelizing this unbridled creativity of the youth and guiding their latent energy should be the duty of a teacher and an administrator in the present day universities. I hope this doesn’t sound utopian, and I hope we reach this goal soon, in the interest of the student within all of us!