Teachers of Delhi University are a dejected lot. The honours courses have always been the USP of DU, but the university is hell bent on demolishing these courses. They have cited various discrepancies in the half-baked courses passed by the standing committee on academic affairs on Sunday and by the academic council on Monday. Apart from many factual errors, the teachers claim that they have not been specified the number of papers, lectures, tutorials, reading lists among others. In the existing science courses, teachers had to delete certain topics to complete the syllabus in time for the exams.
"There are so many issues with the new syllabi that have not been given due consideration. In fact, in Hindi and Urdu, we have not been given any syllabi for minor papers. There are no names of publications and the syllabi completely exclude contemporary poets. In Hindi specifically, it seems the annual-mode syllabus has just been compressed to suit the semesters,'' said Renu Bala, an elected member of the academic council. Teachers say the syllabi were framed in a hurried manner without much debate and deliberations. Besides diminishing the quality of the course, such a move will also affect the performance of students, teachers said.
Teachers complain the university is paving the way for demolishing the honours system of courses. A glimpse of such a situation is already visible in the 13 science courses where semesters were introduced last year. Abha Dev Habib, associate professor, physics, Miranda House, and a member of the joint action body of teachers, said: "There was certainly less time left for academics in the first semester due to teachers' struggle but no time was wasted in the second semester. Still we had been struggling to finish the course now. In the end, the teachers were asked to leave out a few portions to complete the syllabus in time for the exams.'' She added, "This is a fraud. The university will award students a degree for having completed an honours course even though they would not have studied the whole syllabus.''
Alleging that instead of going for actual reforms in problem areas such as examinations and revision of obsolete curriculum, the university is systematically bifurcating the existing syllabi based on the annual model for the semester mode without taking into account the damage to the quality of learning. According to a mathematics teacher of St Stephen's, Nandita Narain, "The first objection we have is they have divided the course into two halves without taking into account the loss of teaching time in the semester calendar which is nearly two months. Therefore, the course gets too heavy for students to cope with. Secondly, the quality will suffer as we will have to rush through it without going to the depth of the subject. Same is already happening to the first semester batch science students.''
Minor subjects is another bone of contention and the teachers are predicting an over all 80% failure in subject like mathematics despite the completion of the syllabi this semester. Students from all streams come for mathematics (H), but students from humanities will not opt for science minors. But the minor papers are not ready and have not been specified in the syllabus, keeping everyone in the dark. "Some university officials are saying that students will opt the same minor papers as those of the BA programme, but we need six minor papers which are not available in the BA programme. It is a complete chaos now,'' added Narain.
