A friend of mine told me in our first
year of B.A. that seeking admission in the English department
at the University of Karachi was the "biggest mistake"
of her life. This was a comment from a student who got
a position in the intermediate examination and was considered
to be one of the department's most hardworking students.
When I asked her why she had decided to
study English, she said that her sister had told her that
of all the departments in KU's arts faculty, English was
considered the easiest as far as a master's was concerned.
Other than that, it also was a way of improving one's
English, she had said. This came as a shock to me because
in my experience I had found English literature to be
a very challenging subject.
As time went on and we progressed in our
studies, we heard similar comments from our juniors, quite
a few of whom had joined for similar reasons. Once I asked
a first year student why she had chosen this place and
she said: "I thought this would be the best place
for me to improve my English and besides, I am in love
with English literature."
She said that except for English all her
classes were going well. She had taken Sindhi and Islamic
history, as her subsidiaries, both of which have little
or no relevance to English literature. I told her that
if she wanted to do her master's in English literature
and do it well she should change her subsidiaries and
take subjects that would complement what she was doing
in the English department.
However, she believed that since she was
a hard working student, she would have no problem getting
good marks in her major. Her reason for taking Sindhi
and Islamic history, while pursuing a master's in English
literature was that she had chosen them because she thought
she could get good marks in them and hence they provided
a kind of insurance against getting an overall low percentage.
In reality, students in their first and
second years do have time to build up their base in English
(in language as well as in literature) and do not have
to worry too much about marks. This is because unless
they have a strong base, they cannot realistically hope
to pass their third or fourth year exams.
In these two later years, students are
required to read a vast amount of literature and without
an adequate proficiency in English many would be left
behind. Furthermore, in the last two years students do
not have subsidiary courses and hence a strategy that
seeks to offset expected low marks in English with higher
marks in subsidiary subjects can't work.
I knew other students in the English department
who also had to struggle very hard - some managed to drag
themselves in to the second year while some couldn't clear
even that first hurdle. Perhaps understandably this caused
them to complain that the department and its teachers
were too tough, and it was also bad for their own confidence.
The problem is that such students often
fail to understand that Karachi University is not like
other educational institutions where notes are available
and one can pass all papers just by having good memorization
skills.
At KU, and especially in the English department,
students are encouraged to use their own thinking and
analytical skills. As one of our professors used to tell
us: "You have come here not to learn English but
rather to demonstrate your English." In fact, when
students take admission in the department, it is taken
for granted that they are proficient in the language.
English literature is not a content or
theory-based subject like sociology or political science
where students have to spend a lot of time studying the
initial theories and concepts. They do not study any theory
about the language itself but use English as a tool to
read various texts. Just like if someone with weak knowledge
of Urdu will not be able to read and understand Ghalib,
Mir or Iqbal, a student with a poor command of English
will not be able to understand the works of Shakespeare,
Milton or Eliot.
Apart from making the mistake of thinking
that they are in the English department to learn English
rather than to study English literature, many students
also do not take the subject seriously. Being accustomed
to the way they studied earlier in school and college,
many wait for exams to come before they begin to revise
in earnest. By then it is much too late because they do
not have enough time to read each text, understand and
absorb it, and form their own critical opinions - something
that they should have done through the course of the term.
The only way out then is to turn to notes
or guide books (called 'keys' in university parlance)
which provide only second-hand information and are quite
poorly written. These books only provide summaries, generalized
notes on themes and contain so-called 'characters sketches'
and are written in bad English. Clearly, studying from
them does not help a student because the exams requires
not writing a simple character sketch but rather a critical
comment or evaluation of certain specific aspects of a
text or a central theme.
Apart from this, when the examiners see
affected vocabulary and ten students producing the same
sentences, it is not difficult for them to see that all
of them must have used the same substandard guide book
to study for the exam and that none of them bothered to
use their own mind in answering the question.
Another aspect of studying at KU's English
department is that students are expected to study from
the very first day of the semester. All the teachers take
it for granted that students have already read the prescribed
texts before coming to class. They give brief lectures
and do not spoon-feed the students but instead encourage
them to work things out on their own. They point out various
possible meanings of a text and try and highlight its
complexity. Teachers of the department do not hand out
photocopied notes just before the exams for students to
memorize and reproduce in their answers.
A senior professor at the department in
fact believes that the job of a university teacher is
not necessarily to simplify the text but rather to complicate
it. For one thing, the immediate benefit of such an approach
is that it helps students open their minds to various
possible interpretations of a text.
Other than excessive reliance on notes,
many students also seem to think that the views of literary
critics are worthy of inclusion in an exam answer. They
do not seem to realize that the teacher is not interested
in knowing what F. R. Leavis thought of a text but rather
what the student thinks of it. This is another serious
mistake. Material in the form of critical analysis by
well-known literary names is there only to help students
develop a better understanding of a particular text and
does not at all mean that they copy and reproduce what
the critics have said.
Those who think that studying
English literature at this level will help improve their
English or enable them to become more proficient in the
language better think again. For instance, the department
of English at KU is not really a place for students to
learn or improve their English - for this there are several
institutes all over Karachi and the rest of the country.
The primary goal is to have students who already have
a good English language background and are genuinely interested
in exploring the world of English literature
