Hey, teacher, don't leave them kids alone

While announcing the opening of a new marine biodiversity institute last month, India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh said something a little odd. He told reporters that the world-famous Indian Institutes of Technology are as great as they are, not because of the faculty, but purely because of the talented students. The implication was that they'd do equally well in a library on their own for three years. He himself graduated from one of these institutes. And so the current affairs magazine Outlook India asked me to write a response to Ramesh's comments, which was published at the weekend and you can read online here.

Actually his opinion is fairly common: many Indians I've met hold the view that good students don't need good teachers to succeed because they'll manage fine by themselves. But I just don't agree. The best teachers, especially in higher education, guide students to the books and ideas that help shape their minds without them even noticing it. I owe everything to the wonderful tutors I've had throughout my life and I'm fairly certain that's true of successful college students in India too. In fact having visited the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, to be honest, I was a little more impressed by the faculty than by the kids.