Treatment skills versus language skills | English or vernacular?

Students admitted to private professional colleges across India, be it dental, medical or other streams, seem to lately come with an acute deficit in reading, writing and communication skills in the English language. The curriculum, however, is entirely in English - study materials, textbooks, journals, even teachers' notes. Yet, the students do not make any effort on their own to improve their English language skills, expecting to be spoon-fed.

So a professor writes (sic):

There are thousands of BDS students in All states probably who are very poor in English -simple grammar and spoken English .They know the answer but cannot express themselves. Can the Health ministry and Dental Council introduce optional or mandatory English classes once a week?All the PG entrance and the Interview is in English. Let the vernacular students get a fairer chances in the competition.

Some dental colleges reportedly do conduct tutorials to improve their students' English language and communication skills, but this is not by an English language expert. The dental faculty themselves try to do it, in a situation of the blind leading the lame.

Perhaps in the next few years, a hard look needs to be taken at whether English needs to continue as the compulsory medium of dental (and other technical & professional) education, or if it is feasible to switch over to the vernacular. If dental students in Thailand write their answers in Thai, and German students write in German, why not in Bengali or Hindi or Tamil or Gujarati?Considering that we have an over-population of dental graduates with very little work or income opportunities, translating the standard texts into regional languages may actually provide them with some employment and regular income! 

Yet, many think that a dentist/doctor's ability to treat patients is not dependent on or inter-related with their English language skills.Unfortunately, it is. Medical / dental textbooks and journals are all in English, and if the student cannot decipher them, her / his ability to gain knowledge from publications in the English language takes a nosedive. A poorly educated dentist / doctor's ability to treat patients is also obviously badly compromised.

Not being able to write a single sentence in correct English is not a disqualification for becoming a fine dentist. Really? Is dentistry fun, or is it funny?

In quest of the perfect answer

The murder of examinations begins at the school level. The photograph and its caption are lucid enough. Graphic details of the process are available all over the news.

The process continues in the private dental colleges, with all the help that the managements can provide. In fact, in certain states, students consider it their birthright to receive such help.

Some universities do take proactive steps to upset the colleges' determined efforts to help their students. One such step is to send the theory answer sheets to external assessors / examiners whose identities are concealed from the colleges and examinees. Yet, time after time, answer sheets of such students come back with very high marks, even though their actual performance in the viva voce and practical examinations leaves much to be desired.

How does this happen? The process is simple but magical.

The student submits an absolutely blank answer paper, which had been issued by the university and signed by the invigilator. The answer sheets are then sealed in a packet and kept in safe custody by the chief invigilator / Principal / college management within the college premises.

At night, the answer sheets miraculously appear out of the sealed packet, and come back to the examinee - accompanied by a solved set of answers for the relevant question paper. The examinee has all night to copy the answers in his own handwriting into the university-issued answer paper, before the sheets mysteriously go back into the packet and seal themselves in before the sun rises. The packet is subsequently sent to the respective university for assessment.

The expenses are small change, compared to the tuition fees being paid for receiving the degree.

In another (less common) method used, selectively dyslexic clerks / data entry operators at the university transform a 17 into 71 while entering a student's marks on a computer. The answer papers are subsequently sealed and archived, with no one the wiser.

The perfect answer is my birthright, and I shall have it!

Studying is easy - and teachers are redundant

So there's this motorist driving fast down the road while engrossed with his mobile phone. The traffic police stop him and ask for his licence.

Motorist points to the large L sign on his car and says, But I am just learning to drive!

- Learning to drive? But where is your trainer? And you are using a mobile phone while driving!
The motorist waves his mobile phone at the cop and says, I am a student of IIN.

Fast-track seats for sale - conditions apply

The attraction of making a doctor or dentist out of one's child seems to be on the wane for quite a few years now. Dentistry as a profession is not financially attractive any more - the topic for a later post. Yet, 300+ dental colleges (of which 40 are government-run), with an inventory of around 25,000 undergraduate (BDS) seats and over 4,000 postgraduate (MDS) seats, need to find gullible folks who are willing to contribute to the college owners' profits, year after year.

So colleges perforce need to offer some freebies as their USP, to attract students. One freebie, of course, is to promise that students would not fail. Another USP offered by some colleges is to allow students - and especially postgraduate students - not to attend college regularly. Their names are enrolled with the University and the Council, but some attend college for a few days a month, others only for a few days in a year.

These seats command a much higher price. And the Chairman laughs all the way to the bank, because an absent student who pays more means double profits for him - more money received, as well as more indirect savings, because the student is just not there to use the college's resources. In effect, the visiting student.

Despite their best efforts to retain them, colleges, however, do lose students midway through the course. Realization dawns on some folks a little late in the day, that the profession of dentistry is not for them. So, having paid their fees partly and wasted some months or even a year or two, these students simply stop coming. As a result, the college stands to lose the uncollected fee for the rest of the years, but cannot, according to rules, admit someone in the middle of the course, say for example, in third year. In fact, there are often not enough students applying, to fill up the available number of seats. And empty seats mean losses.

But there are those who firmly believe in the Indian systems of jugaad (innovative quick fix) and full paisa vasool (bang for the buck). And the Chairmen of dental colleges indulge in the cutting edge of jugaad and paisa vasooli. So those empty seats suddenly get filled a year down the line. How does that happen?

The Council and the universities receive a list of students admitted to their affiliated colleges every year within the cut-off date. The Council of course, never opens up that list to check whether the same people qualified some years later. The universities do, though. And here is where a setting is necessary between the college and the university. Clerical staff in the universities are more than happy to change or add students' names to the original list, in exchange for a few thoBDS in 3 years instead of 4, or an MDS student to get his degree in even one year.

College managements make a commitment that any student will pass the university examinations.Whatever year they might join the course. But fast-tracking the course and saving a year or two of one's life costs money - and students are only happy to pay up!

Taking care of the golden goose

Never, ever, ever, cause stress to a student by pressurizing him to study hard. His father's money pays your salary, and it is never a good idea to stress out the goose that lays golden eggs. And if (s)he does not pass in the final examinations in one attempt, no one pays us extra money for the additional six months that we have to bear with him. So get them to pass, and get rid of them.

 Not everyday does one come across such charming advice, but many a Chairman of private dental colleges in their rare jovial and chatty moods have shared this nugget of wisdom with their faculty members. So much so, that most faculty do not really dare to stop any student (and especially if it is a post-graduate student) from appearing for an examination for lack of attendance, incomplete or poorly done course work, bad dissertation or even downright anti-social behaviour.

The only reason (s)he would ever be stopped is if the college management somehow discovers that there are unpaid dues - or even some extra money that can be collected from the student due to some alleged misdemeanour. To this end, the faculty is encouraged to report chronic absenteeism, incomplete work quota, alleged ragging, improper uniform and such other slip-ups by the students, directly to the Principal and / or management, instead of taking any action at the departmental level. This always results in a monetary penalty (unless the student's father is well-connected, or is a friend of the Chairman).

Students with even an abysmal 10% attendance are eligible to appear for their University examinations on payment of an attendance booster fee. Since the onus of keeping track of a student's attendance is on the college - universities don't check such mundane things! - whatever attendance data is sent by the college to the university is considered to be final.

On the other hand, departmental staff keep getting smarter too. It would be sacrilegious for them to receive any personal gain from a student - if such a matter is reported to the management, he would certainly lose his job. But asking students to contribute towards the improvement of the department is always a good thing. Not only does it help spruce up the department for inspectors to feel happy about, it also receives the blessings of the Principal and management. Students are therefore asked to contribute useful items like charts, photographs, curtains, projector screens, printers, printer ink and other consumables, notice boards, signboards, small dental equipment, dental materials etc. Even refreshments for external examiners are sometimes procured through fund collection by post-graduate students.

The students are also aware that in exchange for the money they pay out, they would not be harassed to work/study hard, or risk failure in their examinations. The money practically guarantees cooperation!
 
What's a few thousand rupees extra, when the students are already paying a few lakhs for their educa... err... degree certificate?

The fearless student and the fearful teacher - Part 2

If the temptation of receiving bottles full of amber intoxicants does not attract an internal examiner, the fear of being jailed certainly makes him sit up and take notice.

Whoever said girl students studying BDS are shy, polite introverts, has not met many of them. And whoever also said that proficiency in English must be a necessary pre-requisite for studying dentistry, was sadly mistaken.

After a very disappointing viva voce during an Internal Assessment examination of a girl student, a rather frustrated examiner asked her to spell tongue.

T-O-U-N-G-E.

Er... umm... what? Say that again?

T-O-U-N-G-E Sir.

Are you sure?

I am sure Sir. I am 100 per cent right. If I am wrong, I will write down the correct spelling one thousand times.

The examiner is speechless for a few moments, the six letters of the word churning over in his head.

And if you are wrong, Sir, you will have to write it down 1000 times. The examiner wakes up from the mental game of Jumble that he was playing.

Out come the textbooks, and the results are inevitable. The girl walks off out of the room in a huff.

Perhaps 15 minutes later, the examiner receives a call on his mobile phone. On the other end was the father of the student. You are mentally and physically harassing my daughter, the man says. How dare you make her write a word 1000 times? The fact that the student had herself volunteered to write the correctly spelled word a thousand times is entirely lost on the doting father. Do you know I can have you arrested for behaving like this with my daughter?

The examiner decided to send in his resignation. The father was a senior IPS officer, and there was only one direction an argument with such a person could take. Mercifully, there had been other witnesses to the entire viva voce session in that room, but one did not take chances.

The Chairman intervened. The Principal intervened. They did not want the faculty member to leave. The police officer was (not) coincidentally a close friend of the Chairman. He apologised. The matter was dropped. The faculty member took back his resignation.

Needless to say, the student passed all her university examinations in that and subsequent years in the first attempt. Otherwise, it might have been...

 

The fearless student and the fearful teacher - Part 1

It is not uncommon for a girl or boy to get married while (or even before) undertaking her / his post-graduate studies (MDS). It is such an effortless cakewalk, these post-graduate studies, that they can easily take on the added responsibility of raising a family. Husbands of girl students are sometimes keenly protective of their wives, and take proactive measures to ensure that they pass at one attempt.

One such husband decided to take matters a little further than others. He offered the internal examiner a bottle of whisky. Unfortunately, the examiner declined to accept the 'gift'. To have his whisky and drink it too, the husband decided to report the matter to the Principal. In his own way.

The professor asked for a bottle of whisky as a favour for my wife to pass her examination. Since I refused to oblige, he is now threatening to fail her. Please look into this. 

The student passed. It is another matter that the professor held back the results for quite a while, until an apology letter was finally written and submitted to him by the student. In the absence of such a letter, the professor stood to lose his reputation - if he passed her, he would have been accused of accepting the whisky. If he failed her, the accusation would have been of vengeful behaviour for not receiving his tipple.

Being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea is often a professional hazard of working as a teaching faculty in dentistry.