A few days ago there were a lot of protests going on against the 50% reservation for the faculty in the IITs.
I was against the joke too, I mean how can a guy who is less than a PhD come and teach in a centre for academic excellence, the temple of learning, the treasure-house of knowledge, the forest of bliss, sattara-ab (similar to Punjab), the land of the Gurunath patisseries, the IITM where even the monkeys belong to the 100+ IQ level and use technology for the benefit of monkey-kind?
After hours and hours of reflection in class, the doubt was finally answered. Teaching in the IITM isn't really tough! In fact being a faculty is a piece of egg-less cake. Thanks to the new method of teaching where people handle simple jobs efficiently and make sure students LEARN things in pleasurable way.
This new way of teaching is called ID which stands for something "I Donno".
There are many ID courses. for eg 110 and 120.
I will be considering ID 120 as an example to show that any body can be hired to teach. Its not only famous for its superb teaching method but also because of its interesting content (The birds and the bees).
The course hires 15 people from the faculty. The following are the various posts available for the faculty.
4 + 4 + 4 guards cum attendance sheet passers - There are 4 people in CRC 101, 4 at CRC 103 and 4 at CRC 102.
Their job is to stop every one from entering the Classrooms after 5 minutes of commencement of classes. Accuracy of time is not important and hence the job is simple. They will also have to pass on attendance sheets from bench to bench and they ll have to keep an eye on the sheet and ensure that every one signs only once. Now that is the tricky part and hence requires patience determination and perseverance and other things but not a PhD.
1 laptop guy. 1 at CRC 102.
He is the techie, his job is to handle the complicated tasks associated with Laptops. Not every one can handle this. You have to be faster than a 5th grader. Our PH102 prof had very poor skills and he couldn't do it. The basic task is to press either the down-arrow key or the button `next´ in the pdf-reader or the space-bar button. The complexity lies in the fact that the Laptop dude is right at the front and he should be able to handle stage fright but he doesn't need a PhD
1 Camera guy.
He is involved in the complex task of tracking the main guy (refer next paragraph), who some times moves from place to place. He should have good hand-eye co-ordination but a PhD is not required. He is not considered a faculty member but I thought it would be fun to have a faculty member take up the job.
1 Patrol Officer.
His job is to move around and try to find people using cellphones. He should have good line of sight (360 degrees). He usually carries a sack with him which probably has pepper spray and stolen mobiles. He moves around in search of all the mobiles that are being used. If he finds any, he puts it in his bag. He also searches for people who listen to the lecture putting their heads on the desk and having their eyes shut (which he considers a crime). He is the vice-captain of the team and his job isn't easy, he has to patrol the place so that no body gets distracted. A difficult job often well handled.1 Main guy (Reader).
He is the main guy of the team. He is the captain. His job is to read every thing that is being previewed on the slides. The reason why his job is important is because he has to read the slides exactly as it is. He has to modulate his voice in such a way that people reading the slides don't get distracted.
This he manages to do by reading in a peculiar way. His pitch is very low and his entire sentence is in the same frequency(No modulation) which not all 5th graders can achieve (only around 95% can). His lines go smooth and uninterrupted because 2/3rds of the class strength don't get to see him directly. By far his job is the toughest. This job is a very demanding one and often there are shifts because one guy cannot handle the job for a long time. The duration for which one particular Main guy in in charge is between 1 and 2 weeks. After that a different guy comes in and takes over.
Thus this elite squad of 15 members manage to teach children NEW INTERESTING things. For us IITians who have cleared JEE securing 1,3 and 6 marks in JEE Maths, Physics and Chemistry respectively, this is all we deserve!
Moral of the story: I m jobless, so are you!
