The women’s studies classroom: freedoms and constraints

The women’s studies classroom by itself may not be a reassuring one; in fact it can be as alienating as any mainstream classroom, especially for students from marginalized backgrounds. Feminist texts and discourses can be daunting, and distanced from one’s life. For students from regional language background, the English itself becomes a barrier. A subversive reading in the curriculum—Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, for instance—may in fact emerge as an unsurmountable obstacle for many students. The text questions the biological foundations of normative gender identities and allows us to think of gender as performative; it is the very act of performing gender that constitutes who we are, there is no stable or biological gender prior to this. Butler troubles the “givenness” of gender by bringing out its constructed, coerced and performative nature and thus her texts have the potential to lead to a sense of freedom and excitement in those not completely at home in the gendered regimes that we inhabit. However, texts like Butler’s may just as easily have the opposite effect—generate dread and incomprehension in a student, and a sense of not quite belonging in the class. No text is inherently radical. It needs to be mediated and related to the lived realities—linguistic, regional and community contexts of students—for it to be meaningful and emancipatory. If this does not happen, the women’s studies classroom may end up reinforcing the pre-existing socio-cultural and linguistic hierarchies.

Framing success/failure

In this piece, I will spend some time reflecting over the nature of the mediation by a teacher in the women’s studies pedagogic space. This mediation cannot be reduced to simplification of texts and concepts that are meant to challenge the apparent simplicity/naturalness of the world around us. I remain wary of teaching approaches that introduce all texts and ideas in frameworks of either the agency or victimization of women. The current media brouhaha over Indra Nooyi’s biography My LIfe in Full is a case in point but one also witnesses the readiness with which such figures are often adopted as role models in mainstream women’s studies discourse. This is not to say that such life stories are to be ignored, they can be important reading. But a story like Nooyi’s cannot be read simply as a “success story”; the media columns do enough of that. It is necessary to locate it within the structures of caste/class that facilitated the narrator’s gendered and spatial mobility, notwithstanding the familial and racial biases she faced. Representing it solely as the success of a “woman of color” in a white, male-dominated corporate world is not merely reductive but may in fact prove disheartening for other women from the third world settings, signalling that the failure to overcome debilitating inequalities is a “lack” within themselves.

Conversations across disciplines

Let me now reflect on my continuing struggle to mentor students, in ways that are not simply about examinations, assignments and research.  Women’s studies, as an interdisciplinary subject, coupled with the institutional assumption that students should be exposed to some form of “gender sensitization,” is offered at various levels in the university where I teach. While I draw mainly from my experience of teaching students at the masters’ and doctoral levels in gender studies, I am heartened by the unexpected connections made with students from a range of disciplines. Sometimes students from mathematics might opt for an elective course on gender studies over electronics simply because they think it is a soft option, and would not add much to their already impossible workload. Every once in a while, happily for me, the subject ends up being not so trivial for some of these students! I steer them to think about the invisibility of women at the top levels of science; do they ever wonder about it? As students of mathematics, does the #MeToo movement hold any significance for them? It has been extremely important for me to communicate to students from the sciences that I value having them in the class, and in turn, they tentatively voice issues and questions that they would otherwise relegate to the background as “waste of valuable academic time.” Feminist mentoring allows students to relate the classroom to their lives and contexts; and find ways of navigating those psychological pressures which go unrecognized in academia, especially in the sciences.

Beyond traditional mentoring

At what point does teaching/supervising become mentoring? If we discount the most insipid, disinterested and exam-driven instruction, most teachers do mentor their students to some degree or the other, by nurturing academic interests and professional aspirations. But traditional mentoring is implicated in the power imbalances between the teacher and the student. A mentor-mentee structure is rarely devoid of hierarchy, even when it enhances the knowledge and professional prospects of the mentee. As McGuire and Reger (2003) point out: “The traditional mentor relationship is a hierarchical one in which one person serves as a teacher, sage, and sponsor to another one in order to facilitate the other’s professional and career goals” (56). This is not always a bad bargain, and many of us will agree to have gained intellectually and materially by associating with a traditional scholar-mentor. But “traditional mentoring is not equally accessible to all groups within academia, and members of dominant groups (i.e., white, male, heterosexual) receive more benefits from traditional mentoring relationships than do members of underrepresented groups” (McGuire and Reger 2003, 59). Such a relationship works when there is a match between the mentor and mentee in terms of backgrounds and priorities; but runs the risk of breaking down when there is a yawning gap between a successful, high-achieving mentor and a less privileged student for whom survival in academics is forever imbricated in social and economic vulnerabilities.

Students/researchers from marginalized locations require a kind of mentoring that goes beyond singleminded dedication to academics. This might sound strange if not undesirable to certain established scholar-teachers with an unwavering faith in “merit.” I recall a rant from a well-respected colleague from the sciences: “They [potential research students] look at my CV and they come here to work with me. The School assigns just about anyone to me! I want to tell this guy [the student], look buddy, this is not what I do!” He sounded terribly frustrated with a process that landed him with research students who did not quite match up to the high standard he believed in, notwithstanding their aspiration to work with a dazzling scholar like him. While he vented, he clearly had no curiosity about the experience of a women’s studies colleague like me. One of my students had just submitted her final draft in the midst of battling domestic abuse. In order for the thesis to reach a submissible shape, I read between the lines as much as the lines themselves, trying to make sense in the light of the discussions we had over years. I was tired of doing very basic language correction and proofing over and over again. But I was reluctant to return the draft for protracted corrections as I would have in case of any other student. I realized what she had done was phenomenal in the face of crushing personal obstacles. I also understood the thesis would in all likelihood open up choices for her including a way out of difficult personal circumstances. At a certain point, I asked my other research scholars to pitch in with preparation of the bibliography, formatting and such tasks. They were happy to help notwithstanding their own trying schedules; their feminist training had moulded them as a community of researchers.

Over years, I have learnt that quite a few of my colleagues in the Social Sciences routinely carry out laborious correction of English before they can even begin to engage with the argument of the drafts submitted. Perhaps the larger presence of rural and first generation learners in the Social Sciences prepares us for this. In an increasingly impact-factor driven academia, this investment has no chance of figuring as “academic achievement.” I feel sheepish each year as I fill up the annual report with not much to show! A rueful thought crosses my mind, “Where did all that labour go!”

The personal in academia

Mentoring is more than helping a student submit her thesis or get through examinations. The feminist principle of “The personal is political” helps us to think of mentoring as a way of validating experiences and lives that are mostly invisible in curricula and academic culture. The centrality of “experience” as a category in the feminist discourse questions the hegemonic mind-body dualism in academia. As many feminist scholars have pointed out, “this dualism reinforces the idea that men are ‘naturally’ equipped to be intellectuals and that feminine qualities (in men or women), such as the expression of emotion, caring for others, and attention to relationships impede scholarly activity” (McGuire and Reger 2003, 55, Jaggar 1989, 145).

Revisiting my own experience as a doctoral student, I remember feeling diminished by my motherhood responsibilities and would look at the impressive reading lists of my fellow research scholars, especially that of my male batchmates, with some envy. I worked late into the night after my toddler slept, and snatched moments here and there during the day, literally “from the jaws of time” as a woman friend put it. Yet this was never enough and I was forever underslept, exhausted and guilt-ridden because I felt my research was not good enough (and it probably wasn’t!). What kept me going? My advisor, a known feminist scholar, demanded rigour but communicated that her expectations stemmed from a certain faith in my abilities. She also nurtured a warm connection with my daughter and me. While her expectations were trying, I never felt that my personal life was devalued. I recall an incident from the early days of my doctoral research. I was reading a complex text by the French philosopher Michel Foucault with my advisor and kept seeking explanation literally after every sentence! I had hastily looked over the piece just the night before, despite having had two weeks’ notice to go through it. Frustrated, she said, “Don’t expect me to spoon feed!” I was shamefaced and would have liked the painful session to end, but responded with some hesitation, “Just spoon feed the first ten pages and then I will read the rest.” No more was said about this and we continued reading the text. This memory brings a smile to my face because six months before the submission of my thesis, I could read complex theoretical texts with speed and without too much anxiety. To this date, I attempt to teach a difficult text by situating it in the experiences of students, like my mentor did decades back. I believe that I survived the demands of my Ph.D. at a difficult juncture in my life because I shared a space of equality and frankness with my advisor.

Nurturing-Mentoring

Mentoring carries the responsibility of enabling someone to move out of debilitating circumstances; it is much more than the term that has emerged as a catchphrase in an NGO-ized women’s studies discourse—“capacity building.” I will draw from the qualitative study conducted by Gail A. Okawa to substantiate this point. As part of this study, Okawa (2002) interviewed Geneva Smitherman, Distinguished Professor, and director of the African American Language and Literacy Program at Michigan State University. For Smitherman, mentoring was an “inheritance.” Her father brought up her and her siblings “under the great hardship of being Black and poor in America.” He was the one who instilled a faith in her abilities inspite of the white, Eurocentric school system. He pushed her to become the spelling bee champ of her school and excel in everything including extracurricular activities. He helped her with the homework in elementary school up until the eighth or ninth grade. Smitherman’s father remained a model for her through her own course of mentoring students of color: high expectations combined with attention to “the intellectual, social, developmental, and other needs of the mentee—helping the whole person to the extent possible” (Okawa 2002, 512).

I believe this precisely points to the labour as well as the gains of engaged, nurturing forms of mentoring. As Okawa puts it: “The mentor sets standards of achievement and excellence for mentees as well as motivates them to stay on task so they can complete the journey. On occasion, this might mean nagging and butt-kickin (especially when/if the mentee starts half-steppin—which is normal, but it has to be overcome). Finally, mentoring is a kind of nurturing whereby the mentor helps/ motivates the mentee to construct a vision of possibilities beyond the present moment” (Okawa 2002, 512). In such a framework of mentoring, a teacher-mentor ensures that a mentee from a disadvantaged background learns to deal with an intellectual culture that can be deeply alienating in terms of its language, practice and protocol, without succumbing to a sense of non-belonging. But this calls for sustained academic and emotional labour on part of the mentor. It is easier said than done.

Mentoring: failures, disillusions, and small rewards

I look at the whiteboard in my room, it is a bit like a palimpsest with submission deadlines for my research scholars—written, erased, struck through, and rewritten. The overshooting of academic deadlines is sometimes owing to slackness but there are often other deeper reasons. With fewer scholarships available, many students juggle between a job and research. This is not unusual, teachers like me will recall having done this during our student days. But a shrinking job market, increased stress on “merit” (defined by social and cultural capital) and pre-submission publication requirements add to the anxiety of young researchers today. Some advisors may publish with their students, and their credentials and familiarity with the world of academic publishing might be of help. The advisor’s name generally figures as first author even in cases where the article draws substantively on the student’s research, field data and academic labour. However there is a heartening trend—a relatively smaller section of senior scholars co-publish with students while choosing to be second author notwithstanding their significant contribution in shaping the theoretical frame and other aspects. As a colleague put it, “She needs it more than I do.”

The home and the class: women’s studies in online mode

The pandemic and the resultant shift to online mode of teaching has brought new challenges to those of us who teach gender in a graduate or post graduate classrooms to students in their early twenties. The line between the home and the outside (the classroom, the university campus, the hostel, a different city) is blurred in the online pedagogic context. A feminist text deepens the chasm between the emancipatory aspirations of young students and the patriarchal site of the home with expectations of gender appropriate, heteronormative behaviour. This sometimes results in severe turmoil and mental health crisis in a student located in the familial space, ironically stemming from the transformative potential of the subject being taught online. As campuses remained closed, women students spoke of being pressurized to get married since they were “sitting at home” anyways. As a teacher I can only listen, trying to provide a space that they do not find at home. I try to communicate that feminist resilience often means simply holding on. I feel grateful when some student assignments relate such dilemmas to the texts discussed in class, even though our pedagogic engagement is only on a distanced, digitized medium.

Mentoring and goal-driven women’s studies: A difficult balance

It is necessary to look at the disciplinary context of women’s studies, beyond the individual ability or failure of a teacher to be an empathetic mentor. Located on the margins of mainstream academia, and bogged down by the struggle for ever-diminishing funding, women’s studies carries the burden of justifying its very existence. A teacher gets caught in endless cycle of projects, extension activities, gender training and mainstreaming programmes and so on. Feminist mentoring on the other hand is a slow job, and a mentor/advisor needs to push beyond the given meanings of mainstream/governance feminism, if she were to relate to the lives and aspirations of students from heterogeneous contexts. However, especially in the current scenario of a market driven knowledge economy, one constantly faces the pressure to make women’s studies “relevant”—without disturbing the status quo. An uncritical alignment with state-centred/global development discourses and NGO-ized welfare models—boosted by the objectives of enhancing employability or vocationalization of students—constitutes the dominant mode of women’s studies today.

As Mohanty (2013) argues, alongside increased privatization and commodification of higher education “[r]adical theory can in fact become a commodity to be consumed; no longer seen as a product of activist scholarship or connected to emancipatory knowledge, it can circulate as a sign of prestige in an elitist, neoliberal landscape”(971). Further, “Knowledge projects are detached from their historical and local moorings and reattached to the global market as “this place” becomes “every other place” and this subject becomes “every other subject” (Mohanty 2013, 972), . If mentoring is about validating the personal and historical locations of students, especially of those from marginalized contexts, such a pedagogic approach can be deeply alienating.

As a faculty member with a permanent position in a central university, I have relatively more freedom to design my courses and not completely succumb to a goal/skill-driven idea of women’s studies pedagogy.  But even in the worst possible scenario, I believe that feminist mentoring will continue to find relevance, perhaps now more than before. In a market-driven neoliberal university, students from marginalized backgrounds will need a validation of the self more than ever, to be able to negotiate new forms of exclusion. Feminist ideas have unexpected and transformative possibilities, even when “contained” within outcome based syllabuses and institutional straightjackets. I am sure I and many other teachers like me will continue to search for ways to make feminist and enabling connections with our students, inside the classroom and outside.

References

Jaggar, Alison M. 1989. “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology.” Inquiry 32 (2): 145 quoted in McGuire and Reger 2003, 55.

McGuire, Gail M., and Jo Reger. 2003. “Feminist Co-Mentoring: A Model of Academic Professional Development.” NWSA Journal 15 (1): 54–72.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2013. “Transnational Feminist Crossings: On Neoliberalism and Radical Critique.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38 (4): 967–91.

Okawa, Gail.Y. 2002. “Diving for Pearls: Mentoring as Cultural and Activist Practice among Academics of Color.” College Composition and Communication 53 (3): 507–32.

Deepa Sreenivas teaches at the Centre for Women’s Studies, School of Social Sciences, at the University of Hyderabad. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Confluence, its editorial board or the Academy.

This article is part of a Confluence series called “Mentor-Mentee Relationships in Academia: Nature, Problems and Solutions”. 

Art practice and teaching as practice in art is a stimulating process that shapes itself within formal and informal creative environments. The dynamic nature and meaning of art as an expanded idea is being experimented within class rooms, artist studios and more often within the limitations of social spaces that artists can occupy. Being an artist and educator the ever-alive question that I have had to constantly negotiate is how do you teach art? A question that most artists, art teachers and students engage with on the daily basis. The question that very often follows is how do you learn art? The age-old discipline that has flexed itself to shape the various processes of human existence still presents as an elusive entity waiting to be unraveled and discovered. It is a challenge, which, if encountered, can have rewarding consequences, not just to strengthen individual values but to build a collective imaginative future. But taking the provocation forward has its dynamics, as it can present an emerging territory yet to be mediated and embraced without fear.

Within the postcolonial context of a Nation struggling to assert and re-imagine the notions of freedom, particularly through the practice of different disciplines, art as a possible inclusive tool is still distanced from its potential stakeholders and larger audiences. For young aspiring artists, these negotiations are brutal, very often forcing them to fit into conventional practices of delivering convincing outcomes to match the disproportionate resource accessibility within art patronage. The alternative is to work within a corporate framework also generating deliverables that have a removed relationship to one’s personal experience.

This leaves limited options for artists wanting to take on the social production of art as a possible full-time practice. A few individuals and institutions, formal and alternative, are taking on the challenge to bridge gaps. It is mostly done through personal vision and mobilizing of little available funds. Within the State mechanism, a detailed review of its accessible support be it teaching, infrastructure, harnessing of contemporary knowledge, cultural forms for social engagement and creating a sustainable creative livelihood need to be addressed. In this context, recognizing and teaching art as a source of knowledge production for building a diverse social environment becomes significant.

With this scenario setting the real tone for my discussion, I am going to put down possible ways to understand the process of learning from my collected knowledge, particularly of and from the gaps that I have experienced.

Art as knowledge production

 Here I must mention Joseph Beuys, a German artist who contributed significantly to art, pedagogy and theory in later half of the 20^th century. He saw his art practice deeply intertwined with art education. In the context of the post-World War II shock, he conceived the notion of ‘social sculpture’ that invited the participation of an informed social engagement. He believed, ‘Every Human is an artist’, acknowledging the ability of individuals and communities to produce knowledge through the practice of art.

Art is commonly seen as a tool for self-expression but more often it embodies as a device shaping complex social and political positions that at times can be only articulated through the many possibilities that art practices can accommodate. This can sometimes become an overwhelming experience for the artist and at times for the audiences or social groups engaging with it. But at the same time for the artist, teacher or art student it opens up unlimited possibilities.

For example, historically the use of diverse mediums in art has been a way for artists to make a statement. The shift from using traditional materials like paint, canvas, clay etc. have been challenged by presenting for example found objects or materials from everyday use. For instance, Joseph Beuys used fat or specifically tallow to make large abstract sculptural pieces with devises to measure its core temperature which is in constant flux. He saw fat as a substance providing heat, as a natural healing material and as one that is alive and responsive to its environment. In this context the artist is bringing alive his personal experience and a collective call for healing. He is presenting an everyday material as one that has a sociopolitical meaning and shaping it as an object to invigorate a conversation within a public space. For the artist and the audience, it is a challenge to engage with the possibilities that emerge from a stimulus like this. It asks to rethink knowledge of a familiar material in one way to imagine and experience new meanings. When such historic artist’s contributions come into the classroom, for young artists it can be a difficult provocation to respond to. The individual object can no longer be interpreted without the understanding of its historical context requiring an intense engagement. But a certain rigor of this nature can expose a student or teacher to various possibilities that experiments with mediums can evoke.

The expanse of knowledge and its dimensions can become communication channels through multiple ways, not necessarily only visually. Audiences and communities can also be included in these conversations to initiate an informed exchange of knowledge, as this criticality brings a generative rhizomatic growth adding to the process of art producing knowledge, for and by the community. The practice of teaching art can align with the process of making and emerging as multiples ways of learning, as an integrated practice.

My personal artistic practice has developed around teaching different learning groups from young children to early practising artists. Most artists engage with teaching at some point of time in their practice. Some artists take on teaching as their focused practice repeatedly nurturing learning environments that also might transform into spaces for experimentations. Contemporary and radical emerging practices very often develop in formal institutional or semi-formal experimental art spaces. Mentors within these places play a significant role in building ethical blueprints for such emerging practices. It is in these incubators that diverse approaches can translate and transform.

For the Students’ Biennale 2016-17 and 2018-19 my partner Narendran, an artist and I mentored a group of young artists studying in the Govt. College of Fine Arts, Chennai and Kumbakonam. Students’ Biennale is an interesting platform as part of the Koch Muziris Biennale, Kochi, for young student artists, studying in Government art institutions to exhibit their works, exposing them to an international audience. Before the outcomes emerged, the student artists participated in a series of workshops initiated by us and the Students’ Biennale. These workshops were central to the development of the works for the exhibition.  It involved extensive collective researching, reading, site visits, interviews, interactions, discussing and working together. This gave way for processed based devised projects to emerge. For the 2016-17 Edition of the Students’ Biennale a project archiving labour was exhibited in Kochi. The collection of works touched upon the various aspects of labour recorded as artistic experiences. The project gave all of us insights into the radical ways in which personal and social narratives can be articulated.

Artist train themselves to see their environments in unique and complex ways, this is part of their process of becoming. Even though the artist community is very small they tend to be very diverse with individual approaches. When each artist nurtures a learning and teaching space, they tend to shape their process as artists within the context of teaching. The young and emerging artists respond to these spaces and people, observing and contributing in layered ways. Exploration of ideas, experimenting with new mediums and responding to immediate concerns can accumulate to slowly develop a refined practice.

Teaching art practice

 Artists describe their everyday engagements in relation to the work that they do as ‘practice’. This notion, as generic as it sounds denotes that it is dynamically evolving and very often as responses to social, political and personal environments. I have often felt that my art practice is constantly shaping itself because of my engagement with teaching. Teaching art or initiating creative responses might be very different from nurturing most other disciplines.

Art as an expanded discipline can overlap with various subjects, very often this aspect makes it difficult to define and tech art, expect in the way of specialized practices or as individual approaches. When teaching, a certain introspection with the notion of the ‘self’ is initiated. Individual existential awareness needs to be explored to identify the grey areas of the self and its expression. Along with a layered understanding of sociopolitical environments ones emerges as a specialist exploring in art. Teaching here can only be creating triggers that students might respond to. Very often these are endless experiments with words, images, approaches and interpretations.

When initiating a learning environment, I would start by making individual students aware of their located identity. Then to further reflect on what their conscious choices are, in terms of what their imaginations, what mediums they have explored and gravitate towards. This process also involves a lot of unlearning of what one already perceives as art. For instance, within the labour project, mentioned earlier, we were collectively thinking about bodily labour and sweat. We discussed the nature of the substance and its meaning as a medium. What emerged in the discussion was to think about collecting sweat as a conceptual exercise. Each of the student artists engaging with this idea collected their sweat when doing intense bodily work, like helping in the kitchen, building something and so on. The collected sweat was bottled and exhibited in the exhibition along with notes on the hours of labour that went into generating the sweat. This process can be seen as a collective exercise that produced an object and raised many questions. What is art? Can sweat become art? Maybe art is a process of awareness that helps us build narratives for collective sharing? How do acknowledge or archive labour and particularly invisible labour?

The locating of one’s identity helps shape a highly sensitive understanding of the ‘self’ to further observe its relationship with the larger environment. The emerging art works in a learning context like this doesn’t necessarily have to be about the identified ‘self’ but this awareness allows for an insight into the layered ways in which each of us relate socially, politically and/or aesthetically. Very often it is this experience that allows for individual artistic experiences to emerge. For me the learning teaching space has been one that is experimental and spontaneous, it moves from individual questions to collective articulation.

Mutually enriching

 The schema of learning and teaching presents itself as a mutual experience for both the artist and the one who wants to be an artist, distinctions that are difficult to make sometimes. Perhaps the artist here has certain tested devices to trigger certain approaches. Even though this is mostly the case, often I have had to reimagine processes to be more inclusive and sensitive when diverse groups are being addressed. These provocations also emerge as circumstances demand, sometimes it is spontaneous and at other times it is a struggle to challenge fixed positions. But it is one that is evolving and accumulating momentum.

The more you realize diversity is present in every group, you see that making space for these voices can shape in many different ways the sensorial experiences and the different locations that each work comes from. This is reaised sometimes by means of the subjective choices, sometimes through the various mediums.

Historically, artists have been using a range of materials and mediums to bring context to their spectrum of expression. These various experiences have been and can be evoked through the selection and use of material. The experimentation with these complex processes asks for responses from multiple stand points.

Critical thinking

To imbibe critical thinking in making practices might help in building layered understanding of the present, influenced by the past and future. This is a process that presents as an interesting discussion in any learning space particularly in art, as it has the possibility and exhilaration to touch upon a range of content. Weaving in aspects of criticality and resistance can build strong narratives. Learning environments can shape into spaces where hidden or ignored narratives can find a valid voice, having the potential for these spaces to turn into socially and politically charged discussion spaces.

With inclusiveness becoming increasingly important, critical thinking can open doors to allow for more dynamic perspectives. Allowing to reimagine and challenge dominant narratives that have occupied the central spaces invariably creating margins. What can then possibly be a nurturing space for an emergent practice-based teaching? This question has been a point of enquiry for me and a few fellow artists. These notions have emerged as experiments with art making, exhibiting and in finding ways to activate this temporal space that come alive. We are increasingly realizing that it is through community engagement, be it within the artist community or in relationship with the larger community, that we will be able to device a more organic practice of learning and teaching. As art is not always a practice that can be initiated and nurtured in isolation, it needs an evolving ecosystem of responses and giving.

Krishnapriya C P is a practising artist, educator and cultural producer based in Chennai. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Confluence, its editorial board or the Academy.

This article is part of a Confluence series called “Mentor-Mentee Relationships in Academia: Nature, Problems and Solutions”. 

There are many forms that the PhD program can take, and though the thesis is the endpoint in all cases, the requirements for getting a PhD vary with regard to the type of problem, the nature of work involved and most importantly, the relative contributions of the PhD student and guide towards completing a PhD.The nature of the relationship between mentor and mentee has been aptly summed up into three broad types in Dr Gadagkar’sarticle. The path to getting a PhD depends heavily on this relationship of mentor with mentee. The nature of the mentor-mentee relationship also impacts the amount of learning both of theory and practice in the area of specialization, as well as acquisition of problem solving skills, of the mentee.As highlighted in Gadagkar’s article, the independent mode of doing a PhD, in which the mentee has more freedom to carve out her area of research and work out how to execute it, has the maximum benefit in terms of the intellectual development of the mentee and learning of research skills. In this mode, the mentee would have acquired problem solving abilities both in working out experimental approaches to a problem and in answering a research question.This mode or relationship requires a culture in which one is prepared to make allowance for a student to learn in her own way (despite the time needed to achieve this). It may well require that the mentor is willing to accommodate changes in the original plan and make course corrections in the process.The second type of mentor-mentee relationship discussed in the above-mentioned piece, is the collaborative mode, in which there is an equal involvement of both mentor and mentee in planning and carrying out the research.This again requires that the mentor places sufficient confidence and faith in the abilities of the mentee to contribute independently to the research problem.The third type of relationship in this category, is one that Dr Gadagkar refers to as the “apprenticeship mode”. This is a path that is least geared towards optimal development of mentee as an independent thinker and researcher. It requires little intellectual input or involvement of the mentee who is assigned to work on a small part of a bigger problem that is already defined by the mentor.This mode quite evidently, leaves the mentee with little freedom in carrying out the research.Both the problem as well as the path involved are spelt out by the mentor.This latter mode is increasingly prevalent in science in recent times, especially in experimental research laboratories. In a scenario of increasing difficulty in obtaining funds for research, and the associated pressure to ‘publish or perish’, productivity is the overwhelming concern of the research mentor and this leads to compromising the quality of mentorship as well as the learning process of the mentee as such. The mentees are essentially pairs of hands that are recruited to carry out the assigned work, and are expected to produce results in the shortest possible time.

Quite apart from the expectations imposed by the mentor in this process, mentees themselves have their own perceptions and motivating factors in doing a PhD. In an ideal situation, students should have enough choice in their educational opportunities and the freedom to recognize their skills and pursue the career that suits them the most. This is a far cry from what one sees in India. Academia unfortunately, is the least preferred career path as compared to the lucrative professions that are associated with either money or social privilege or both. The trend is that if one does not qualify for medicine, engineering, business or accountancy, one gets into a routine Bachelors program which follows into a Masters and then automatically, into a doctorate.The desirability of moving up in the career ladder, with the possibility of better paying jobs, means that one tries for the highest degree possible. This path leads to students with little interest in academia or in research in particular, and who have opted for it by default, or due to pressure from family (usually for perceived prestige and social standing).

In addition, the essence and purpose of PhD is viewed differently from one place to another. It is often viewed as a training program and in this situation, graduate students are required to carry out research using a systematic approach to the research problem. It does not matter much if the work leads to novel findings or not. When viewed as a gateway to a research career, which means competing for the best possible opportunities, whether in postdoctoral positions or other jobs, good quality publications are an essential part of a PhD. For this, one seeks challenging problems that may lead to new and interesting results. Against a backdrop of an oversupply of PhDs versus demand in recent times, even a postdoctoral position becomes competitive and difficult to get. This places a premium on novelty and originality of doctoral research.

Chitra Kannabiran is a scientist at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Confluence, its editorial board or the Academy.

This article is part of a Confluence series called “Mentor-Mentee Relationships in Academia: Nature, Problems and Solutions”. 

Teaching/Mentoring as passionately political work

Learning is a social process. Ostensibly, education is a non-political institution that facilitates this process. Far from that, education is a profoundly political field. As part of the ideological state apparatus (ISA), education system produces and circulates knowledge that in turn supports the dominant socio-political-economic order. As Louis Althusser argues, it is through the educational institutions that the dominant section legitimizes its unfair control over resources, and normalizes various forms of inequality. Nevertheless, if education is associated with reproduction of dominance, it can also play a role in challenging the same (Apple 2019: 18). For the legendary philosopher-activist Paulo Freire, education has to be about changing society. If education is a field invested with political interests, teaching has to be an intense political mission to counter hegemonic interests and foster social change. Krishna Kumar (1989) has also reflected similar sentiments when he argues that schools [or universities] have to be agents of social change and not merely reflect the existing dominant social values. What is important, therefore, is to understand who produces knowledge, whose interest the educational apparatus serves, whose voices are reflected through the curriculum and whose is absent or gets drowned. Answers to this will help to decipher what kind of political strategies are to be initiated to make education a political act to exorcise the ghost of hegemonic dominance of casteism, religious orthodoxy, patriarchy, colourism, and class-biases etc.

For a society that aspires to counter this hegemonic political landscape, the schools/universities need to play a major role in fostering values that nurture egalitarianism and democratic spirit. What we need therefore is to lay bare the relationship between the dominant ideology and the curriculum, and adopt critical pedagogy that engenders democratic values. The teacher-mentor has a tremendous responsibility to initiate and foster critical learning that makes this possible.

For this, we need teachers as mentors who are invested with a sense of justice. Unfortunately, most of the teachers take up teaching without a political sense of justice for all. We can classify two kinds of mentors. One is the by-default mentors who perform teaching or mentoring as part of their profession. They are not passionate about it. I am therefore not interested to consider these teachers as mentors. The others, mostly a minority, are passionate mentors, who love to teach and interact with the students, and actively take interest in their well-being and contribute towards shaping their lives. Such passionate teachers as critical pedagogues prepare the society towards a journey with critical consciousness. Personally, I did not have had a mentor as a student, though I am blessed with relationships with a few people who have inspired me to be in academics. Nevertheless, “not been mentored” is in fact is one of the reasons for which I wanted to be a passionate mentor. I often feel that the students must be looking for or longing for a friend and a guide (as I was doing as a student). How could I not be concerned about them!

The essay here is mostly based on my personal experience as a faculty of Sociology in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), in its Tuljapur Campus.

“Critical pedagogy” and “Engaged pedagogy”: Mentoring for democratic and participatory learning

“Critical pedagogy” as championed by Paulo Freire (1921-1997), departs from the “banking system” of learning that emphasizes on memorizing information, and learning certain skills to make a career in response to the demands of the market. Critical pedagogy, on the other hand, wants us to know the relationship between power and knowledge to explain who has control over conditions of learning within the classroom, and its impact outside. By giving agency to the learners- the students- critical pedagogy expects them to question the taken-for-grantedness of the existing system. Far from being passive learners, the students are expected to transform existing knowledge, and create newer forms through self-reflection and through critical dialogue with others.

bell hooks, however, asserts that one needs to go beyond critical pedagogy. What is important is to go one step further for the practice of “engaged pedagogy” that involves “self-actualization”- the act of transforming oneself to attain well-being.  Both the teacher and the student have the moral responsibility of taking care of their moral well-being as well. Taking cue from Vietnam Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, hooks argues that a teacher has to be a healer. As healer, the teacher should heal themselves first, ‘because if the helper is unhappy, he or she cannot help many people’ (hooks 1994: 15). As the teacher has to practice what they teach, it also helps them to mentor the students holistically by not just supplying information, but by making it meaningful for them in their lives.

Teaching in the classroom is a first step towards mentoring the students. As undergraduate students, it is about initiating them into a distinct domain of knowledge. It is also about initiating them into the perspectives of social sciences that helps them to develop a critique of the social sciences in general, and discipline in particular, as well as to develop critical perspectives offered by the discipline(s) through which they can see the world differently. When I introduce the students to the world of Sociology, the students are given a critical understanding of the emergence of the discipline of sociology, and then various perspectives within Sociology that provides varied vantage points to see the society. As they try to develop a “sociological imagination” through their critical engagement with “common sense” they take their first steps towards unlearning. Unfortunately, the unlearning starts at a very late stage as they enter the university. The schooling of the students does not enable them to develop a critical mind. Most schools prescribe learning based on memorizing information.

The next task is to make the students believe in themselves and participate in a democratic process of learning. Every year, to the new batch of students, I give example of my favourite teacher in JNU who told us the story of his teacher who posed a question to the students in his first class- “I do not necessarily know more than what you know, …  then why am I standing here as a teacher?” As students would struggle for answers, after taking a pause, he would supply the answer- “… because I happen to be born earlier!” At one stroke, this dismisses the divinity of the teacher as “guru”. Within the Indian Brahmanical tradition, the guru is associated with a divine status that is not to be questioned. Sharmila Rege also points out that the critical pedagogy must reject the teacher as “god embodied” (Rege 2010: 94). I tell my students that the first step towards critical learning is “doubt” rather than have unquestioned faith in the teacher or in the (canonical) texts. Using Karl Popper’s theory of falsification, I argue that nothing in this world of knowledge need to be treated as sacred, and as true learners, they need to question everything including the ideas of their teachers.

In the first instance, many students are amazed, and some are also amused as they have been told so far that they are supposed to believe in what they read in the books or what the teacher says. Now, they are told that through their ‘disbelief’ and ‘criticism’ they contribute towards production of knowledge. And believe me, that makes the students excited about their role as active partners in the process of learning which is fluid and dynamic, not fixed forever. I encourage the students to express their opinions and values. I also tell them, however, that not all values are equally valuable. It is important to evaluate the values. How do we do that evaluation? They are explained how the dominant value/idea is a society, as Karl Marx pointed out, is the idea of the ruling class. Therefore, in a democratic society, the preferred values need not be that of the same class. Those dominant values that we generally consider as ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ need to be deconstructed and reconstructed. For example, in Sociology, when they are taught functionalist and conflict perspectives, or feminist and subaltern perspectives, the students see a new world before them hitherto blocked from their vision. They find that these alternative narratives are novel, exciting, and also at times painfully disturbing as it destabilises their own experiences. The marginalized students such as the Muslims, Adivasis, Dalits, girl-students across categories go on to discover new ways of understanding domination and marginality, those from the privileged background also discover their own prejudices and privileges. Intersectional locations (of caste-gender-religion etc.) further complicate their understanding, and that is how they also learn to view the society not through simplistic categories, but as complex realities.

Diversity in classroom makes it an exciting place of learning. In TISS, fortunately we have students from across India, as well as from various socio-economic backgrounds thanks to the reservation policies. That makes the classroom an ideal place to practice critical pedagogy. Sometimes, I also face hostilities from students who are from privileged backgrounds, or who are heavily influenced by religious fundamentalism thanks to their socialization earlier. Some of them change their values and perspectives over a period of time, some do not. But, the purpose of engaged mentoring is not to ‘convert’ people. It is to instill a sense of participation in the classroom deliberation and help them evaluate their own values through the yard-sticks of democratic principle. That is the joy of education as practice of freedom, for it allows students to assume responsibility for their choices. Engaged mentoring is also to help them develop critical consciousness to engage ‘in an active, dialogical, critical and criticism-stimulating method’ (Freire 2013: 42).

Thus, the mentor, though granted extra power in this system, is not to be a dictator. Power, as bell hooks argues, is not necessarily bad. A teacher need not pretend that they do not have power, or that they do not want power. What is more important is how the power is used (hooks 1994: 187). A teacher can (mis)use power to muffle voices in the classroom, and maintain the social hegemony; or they can use it to ensure multiple voices speak and learn together democratically. This can teach us to live together as equal beings and also to work together towards breaking hegemonic and normalized ideas.

Mentoring to Transgress

Mentoring that happens in the classroom is not enough for someone who is a passionate teacher. Teaching does not begin and end at the doorstep of the classroom, though unfortunately that is how many professors complete the task. After taking a class on marriage from the perspectives of feminism, one student, turned up in the office and asked- “Could you please explain why mother did not break her relationship with my abusive father for so many years?” She was one of the many students who would come up with their own questions, often that is about their ‘personal troubles’, to use the concepts of C. Wright Mills, as they struggle to link it with the ‘social issues’ as they attempt to develop their sociological imaginations.

Gender identities and politics plays a significant role in the learning process.  While the gender issues are discussed in the classroom, there lies a wide field outside that domain that shapes the way gender is organised and shapes individual’s behaviour. For boys, it is an opportunity of unlearning and relearning to be a participant in democratic politics in everyday life as they come to terms with their privilege of birth. Of course, many male students resist, inside and/or outside classroom. What is refreshing to see is that some of them do change their ideas about gender and participate in progressive politics. For girls, these are ideas of resurrection. They are very vocal and excited in classroom as well as outside. Teaching-mentoring helps transform the learning outcomes into life out comes. The rebelliousness against patriarchal values and power-structures redefines the way they conduct themselves within the campus and at home. One day, there was a discussion on “benevolent patriarchy” and I illustrated that with the example of people affectionately calling their daughters (beti) as betā which in fact is a term to address the sons. The same day, after the class, one girl protested at home when her father called her betā and explained to him that if he could not call his son as beti with affection, then it is highly patriarchal to call the daughter as betā.

This might be a case where the girl stood her ground, but there are many other cases where the girls are snubbed for being too radical and spoiled due to their education in TISS. They face harassment at home, or are denied further education, or forced to compromise. Parents find it difficult to adjust to the children who now talk feminism, equality, rights and justice etc.; write term papers on communal violence or on experience of (benevolent) sexism in personal life; or write a dissertation of homophobia in their Church. Girls face this kind of discord at home more than the boys. Sometimes girls break up their relationship with their boyfriends as they exercise their agency to counter patriarchy. All these are sad, even though it is a vindication of the outcome of mentoring the students about rights and justice.

It is politically enriching to mentor the students coming from underprivileged background especially the Adivasis of ‘dominant-land’ India, indigenous students from the North-East, the Dalits, the Muslims and the Other Backward Castes. For these students, it is not just their poor material condition, but more than that their social identity poses a serious challenge for them to experience equality. In an institution like TISS, liberatory struggle is well rooted within the student community, but that often needs overt and covert support and guidance of some faculty members. In our campus in Tuljapur, there are only a few who are associated with the resistance politics of the subaltern students. Many other professors would not like themselves to be associated with the resistance politics else they might be “branded” as supporters of the ‘quota-students’. Nevertheless, for me, it is crucial that the students are also mentored for leaning a few steps in developing self-esteem, and fight for diversity and their right within that framework. It is a great pleasure for me to work with young minds to organize Ambedkar Memorial Lectures, celebration of Indigenous day or Savitribai Phule’s birthday as teachers Day (and rejecting Radhakrishnan’s birthday as Teacher’s Day). This helps foster respectable identities for the students and a legitimate sense of place within the space of academia. It also engenders a sense of justice to heal the psychic turmoil that students from the margins experience.

Care, love and support:

“Sir, are you there in November in the Campus? … I am coming for a week or two”- was the message from a (ex-)student who wanted to come to the Campus and spend a week’s time with us as she was too tired of the city (Delhi) life. I was pleasantly surprised that she didn’t even bother to ask me if I would agree to that idea. Of course, not every student that I have mentored may approach like this, but this is what comes as surprise gifts to a teacher who loves students deeply. When the students live with you in the campus, you meet them every day, go for a discussion during morning walks, invite them for a cup of tea/coffee, share lunch/dinner, ask them to come over for cooking during certain special occasions, or store their birthday cakes till midnight- are all part of the relationship that makes them comfortable and share a bond that further helps a teacher to understand them. Then they freely share their problems- separated parents, abusive father, financial stress, career anxieties, or harassments by their hostel mates and other tragedies of life. As young undergraduate students, living away from home, these are the relationships that are very crucial in shaping their lives.

“Come, let us live with our children”– this often-quoted motto of Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) has been part of my consciousness since my early childhood. My father, who was a very popular school teacher, had inscribed this over the door of his office. Subconsciously, I have imbibed his abilities to love and sacrifice for his students. Yet, despite of receiving the students’ hugs and heart-felt appreciations in return, I do feel at times that I could have done better; that I might have left some students behind that could have carried along; that sometimes I have let my students down, that I should have further done away with my biases and prejudices. As a mentor it has been a journey of mixed feelings, unlearning old ideas, and learning a few new things.

The regret is that there are not many professors in the universities who are sensitive to the students’ needs including the learning needs, and that too at the undergraduate level. Most of them are busy with their own research and publication and of course networking with the higher ups for generating more social capital for themselves. In most of the big universities the faculty members concentrate only on the research scholars, and then may be on the MA students to much lesser extent. Developing relations with undergraduate students hardly pays any dividend. University Grants Commission (UGC) also emphasizes on Academic Performance Index (API) scores that has no place for passionate teaching and mentoring of any kind. Then, who would bother to mentor the undergraduate students even as rituals?

References:

Apple, Michael. 2019. Can education change society? New York: Routledge.

Freire, Paulo. 2013 (1974). Education for critical consciousness. London: Bloomsbury.

hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Oxon: Routledge.

Kumar, Krishna. 1989. Social character of learning. New Delhi: SAGE.

Rege, Sharmila. 2010. Education as Trutiya Ratna: Towards Phule-Ambedkarite Feminist Practice. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.45(44): 88-98.

Byasa Moharana is Assistant Professor at the School of Rural Development, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Tuljapur. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Confluence, its editorial board or the Academy.

This article is part of a Confluence series called “Mentor-Mentee Relationships in Academia: Nature, Problems and Solutions”.