Interrupted by pandemic, campus culture is the crucial link for students

Interrupted by pandemic, campus culture is the crucial link for students

Paul Wilson

08.09.2021

As Tamil Nadu and a few other states resume on-campus classes for schools and colleges it is imperative to understand the priority of the institutions. Is it just academic excellence or all-round development?

Beyond prizes and scores, learning in schools and colleges is intertwined with values, culture and ethics that help shape the personality of students leading to a sustainable perception to the institutions. But pandemic dispensation has shifted the priority of teachers, students and parents. In 2020, after the first wave of Covid-19, fear of the disease was all-encompassing.

There was apprehension on the part of parents about sending their wards for on- campus classes due to lack of vaccination. But after more than a year at home, parents have realised the importance of social learning that happens through on campus mode, appealing to the transformation of a student’s personality.

In the race for a career, we often fail to recognise the implications of cultural and emotional intelligence that students get acquainted with through on campus learning. Education can never be envisaged as just an intellectual acquaintance or cognitive deposition, rather it encompasses personality development through social learning on campus.

Over the past year, teaching and learning, could very well be associated with distance education mode. Any educational campus would be associated with the tangible cultural heritage that helps in comprehensive development of students. Students often identify themselves with physical spaces in a college or school such as cafeteria, hostels, stone benches, temple or chapel and green spaces that contribute to informal chats, building relationships and gaining negotiation skills. Add to this the cultural heritage of educational institutions that are passed on from senior folks to freshers in a college or school. Events like auditions for scouting talent, intercollegiate or school cultural programmes, NSS and NCC, help develop interests and personality traits of a student community characteristic of a given institution.

The retention capacity of nostalgic memories of students through their oncampus engagement with tangible and intangible cultural heritage as part of campus life has profound influence on the legacy, institutional perception, resilient capacity during crisis, sustainability of the institution through the consistent admissions and placement even amidst economic breakdown.

Pandemic dispensation has triggered cultural disengagement owing to the lack of access to campus life. Though many institutions are making efforts in mitigating the cultural disengagement through events on the digital platform, the essence of the real time and face-to-face collaborations among students is missing for a meaningful engagement through affective learning. Cultural disengagement has a potential threat of facilitating the evolution of counter culture by students (freshers) and it may or may not resonate with the institutional values and the mainstream culture of the institution. To neutralise the effects of the cultural shift over the past year, cultural rehabilitation is necessary through engagement of freshers with the alumni for cultural continuity.

Reopening of educational institutions should not be perceived as just an opportunity to complete the syllabus. Authorities need to use it as an opportunity to check cultural disengagement among students when they return. It is the responsibility of the teachers to go beyond the staggered behavioural patterns of students, if any, and consciously make efforts to conserve the cultural heritage for a progressive institutional perception and sustainability.

(The writer is the principal and secretary, Madras Christian College)