Compulsory attendance is counterproductive

Students must be treated as adults capable of knowledge creation and not as ciphers

One of the more fundamental issues in the way higher education in India is regulated is the infantilisation of adult students, and the misplaced belief that the administration must exercise maximum control over students in order to create an effective learning environment. The issue of compulsory attendance which has reared its head in Jawaharlal Nehru University, is a symptom of this problem. The belief behind making attendance compulsory is that if students are forced to sit in the classroom, they will end up learning from the teacher, no matter how boring, insipid, or uninspiring a class may be.

The problem with such thinking is that it assumes that students – adults, with the right to vote and make their own decisions in life outside of the college environment – are not responsible enough to make their own learning choices. That they don’t, or worse won’t, attend lectures because of some childish impulse to play truant. This approach to learning assumes that the student is an empty receptacle in which the all-knowing teacher may pour in knowledge; and their choice to not attend certain lectures will deprive them of this knowledge. This attitude removes the student from the process of knowledge creation, effectively assuming that the student can have nothing important to contribute to the learning process.

But in order to stimulate critical thinking and the ability to question established rules, students must be included in the learning process. If professors are unable to hold the attention of students, there is no point in forcing them to attend; because as everyone who has ever been to a boring lecture knows, simply being present does not mean anything. Learning can only occur when the student is engaged and is ready and willing to grapple with the problems under consideration. A robust education system must include students as partners in curriculum design; and not treat them as storage bins for information, instead of conscious beings capable of knowledge creation.