Abstract
There was this recent editorial in a sister specialty which queried whether we are failing our students by passing them. 1 Passing and failing are two sides of the same coin. The person who fails feels targeted, while the person who passes feels it is inevitable and was because of their efforts. The truth lies somewhere in between. We were also students at one point—maybe a distant past, but definitely at some point. “Change the name and the story is about you” is a famous quote by Horace. Passing all of them or zero percentage pass is producing more questions than answers.
NEET has ensured that the best institutes attract the best students. Thus, it is a natural corollary that the faculty are responsible for the 3 years of training. If, even after that, someone is inadequate, a part of the blame, miniscule or substantial, lies with the faculty. Logical, right? Pass or fail is incidental. After 3 years of training, if the student has not performed to the expected level, then there has to be some accountability. Docendo discimus literally means “by teaching we learn.” Or, God forbid, maybe we have not been taught to have learnt. So there has to be a “Mea Culpa” on behalf of the teachers too.
There is a reason why every ethics committee categorizes students as “vulnerable population.” They are on par with pregnant mothers. There were periods in the not-too-distant past when students, especially postgraduates, doubled up as postmen, bearers, waiters, fuel fillers, euphemistically called assistants (unpaid, of course) in the clinic and consults—a personal errand boy, in short. So the pendulum swinging to the other extreme is not a surprise. To make it clear, both extremes are wrong.
And then there are star-studded researches doubling up as teachers. This article’s only saving grace, in not being a dental specialty, 2 lets the cat among the pigeons by concluding that graduate students do not give higher scores to teachers with high quality of publications, while bachelor students give lower scores. An added twist is that we as a profession do not agree on a single treatment plan and are proud of it. The differentiation between Need to Know and Nice to Know is non-existent in our profession. While we flaunt our MDSs and PhDs, which are of no use in education, we do not even discuss the fact that we have not done even a BEd, which is the worldwide requirement for teaching starting from Kindergarten.
Many times, there is no need for a teacher. The anecdote often stated is the discovery The Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa—a historic and archaeological site, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages, located in Alexandria, Egypt—which was discovered when a donkey fell down through a hole in the ground and not because of any scientific efforts. The take-home message, loud and clear, is that the teacher is more in need of the below-average student.
QED: The best practitioners or the most successful clinicians have been our students who we graded as average or “just pass.” Something to ponder if our hearts are in the right place.