By Dr Rashi Mishra
Imagine a fictional situation:
Educator, entrusted with the sacred duty of conducting an examination, reduced to pleading for something as basic as printing question papers. The office staff is on leave, the printer is locked, and there is no provision for a guest login despite repeated requests. At this point, the peon tries to help, suggesting that since another department often uses their printer, the educator could also get the exam papers printed there. The educator turns to another department. Instead of empathy, she is met with arrogance, a clerk questioning her endlessly. The educator stands, almost begging to be understood. Finally, after much humiliation, the exam papers are printed but not before the teacher’s dignity is bruised.
In our institutions of higher learning, examinations are said to test the students. Yet, quite often, it is the educator who undergoes the real examination. A locked printer, inaccessible passwords, and rigid protocols transform a simple task, i.e., printing question papers, into an ordeal. Educators, once the architects of minds, become supplicants, navigating corridors where access is governed by unseen rules and quiet displays of power. Within office spaces, guardians of paper, ink and ego sit, questioning not the exam but the examiner, reminding who truly holds power in the temple of learning. Humiliation is administered with a casual stretch of a leg or a dismissive glance. Only after sufficient humiliation and drama does the miracle occur. The sacred sheets roll out of the printer, almost as a favour bestowed rather than a routine task completed.
This parody of everyday reality exposes a troubling inversion: educators, the supposed architects of minds, now beg. Well said by someone, meanwhile, academic excellence may inspire, but administrative whims decide. Ironically, policy discourses in India emphasise innovation, and smart education, yet the lived realities of educators remain tethered to archaic office cultures where a printout can become a site of struggle.
If educators must first beg for paper before they can test knowledge, perhaps the real exam is not for the students at all, but for the dignity of education itself. In the contemporary landscape of education, educators are positioned as mentors of future generations, and the backbone of intellectual progress. Yet, in practice, they often find themselves engaged not in pedagogy but in negotiations with printer and passwords. The narrative suggests that, before testing their students, educators must first pass the test of endurance and humiliation.
(The writer, an academician at Doon University, was awarded the Governor’s Award in 2023 for her work on the Chipko Movement.)
