Unmasking shadows in the classroom : A story my classmates never forgave

 It’s been a while since I first began hearing about women reporting harassment complaints against teachers. Every time such a case comes up, we are triggered, and we feel strongly that the teacher must be punished. For a few days, these cases dominate headlines, then slowly vanish. Only a few are followed by the public until the court announces its verdict.

But most times, we fail to hear the victim’s side of the story. The victim hides behind the mask of confidentiality.

Today, I want to share an incident I personally witnessed—an incident that broke and rebuilt me. It happened in a place where I once felt the most comfortable and protected: my school.

I don’t know if what I went through would legally be considered “harassment.” But I do know this—it made me feel uncomfortable.

A Flashback

It was September 2021. I returned to school after months of being away due to COVID-19 lockdowns. Class 11 felt special. I was in the Commerce group, something I had chosen wholeheartedly, dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur (back then).

We had a young, energetic teacher—charming, different from others, almost a Gen-Z kind of teacher. He spoke in Tamil, our mother tongue, and his classes were interactive and lively. Out of 42 students—16 girls and 26 boys—almost nobody disliked him. He was popular not just in our class, but across the school.

Things went well until Class 12.

Favourite child

Ms X and I were his favourites in the class. We sat right in the first row, and over time, he started sharing his personal stories. I don't and didn't find anything wrong in that. But over time, he started sharing his love stories with his girl students in the previous batches. An air of discomfort started surrounding me then. Sometime later, there was a doubt if he was flirting with both Ms. X and me. Once he had consumed alcohol and came to class, and asked Ms. X if it was evident from his looks that he was intoxicated. That was August 2022. As a child open to her parents, I told my parents, who later made a complaint to the principal. After the investigation, I was proved right and the teacher was suspended.

 

Image generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E via ChatGPT

Alienation and the Yearning for Acceptance

After his suspension, the teacher entered the class and said, “The girls in the first two benches have broken my trust and ditched me.” Though the school tried to protect my confidentiality, my classmates soon figured out that I was the one who complained. The same classmates who once hailed me as "the princess of the class called me a 'stray dog'. Few cursed me. The entire class alienated me. Anything could be tolerated, but for the very first time in my life, I endured what was called ‘caste-based assault’. Words might not be sufficient to communicate the complexity of emotions that such behaviour triggered in me. After this incident, my other teachers respected me more than ever. But my peer group never accepted me. I yearned for social acceptance. Words like ‘disloyal', heartbreaker', and Immature’ made me feel guilty. Let me be frank, I was broken internally, and I believed that I broke someone’s trust. This incident, in fact, eroded my innocence, teenage charm, confidence, and my gracious smile.

Appreciation

Days passed with anxiety and loneliness. I finally passed out from my school with high marks, and when I was felicitated, our correspondent, principal, and vice-principal appreciated my parents for nurturing me with ‘good character’ [I don't boast here]. But I learnt something deep from it. We all talk about character-building, but honestly, a good character isn't enough to survive this world of snakes. It is a character strength, I believe, that is important to survive. It took me 18-20 months to realise that it is not most Important to be a ‘good girl' to the world, but the difficult, yet significant thing is to be honest to ourselves, after all, the only person we'll be with forever. To call a spade, a spade needs courage, and the best part is that it is embedded within our inner selves.

Men are not bad.

Let me be clear that I don't mean men are bad, and male teachers are demons. Even now, the best teachers I have had included men who gave me the space and dignity I deserve as a student.  I just meant that every teacher who makes a kid laugh and enjoy is not a hero, and every teacher who asks a kid to read and do assignments is not a villain. Every generation might have its own style, but teaching must never lose its traditional traits. A teacher should be strict and friendly. And modern-day philosophers, kindly stop preaching stupid facts, that teachers must suit the generation by making classrooms fun-filled and serving what students ask for. Remember that teachers generally are more mature and experienced than students, and they ‘good teachers’ know how to serve a good cup of tea. Creative learning, which my teacher promised to cultivate in our classroom, failed miserably because discipline was nowhere in the picture.

How would it affect women's education?

I grew up in a city with progressive parents and a school that protected me and my student rights. I am blessed to have a principal who guarded me like an infant in the uterus.. But what if such an incident happens in a village where education is a dream for girls, what if the accused faculty is from a dominant caste and the victim is from a not-so-dominant caste? The answer is scary. And this honeytrap is scarier than you can imagine.

Why did I write it now?

After this incident and a subsequent verbal harassment in college, I began to become more reclusive and observant. As I walked farther and longer from this haunting incident as a teen, I now feel the urge to unmask myself. I now tear all these masks I’ve been wearing in the name of confidentiality and protection. I can now show my face to the world, and I know it is not beautiful. I know, I have scars. But I wear them, I don't have an identity crisis. I don't write this blog to gain sympathy or attention, but to urge girls around to weed out those uncomfortable weeds when they are young. I still respect him for the ‘human’ he is, may not be for the ‘teacher’ he was. For now, I know what it takes to be a ‘human’, after all, feminism or women's rights is nothing but humanism. My story might not be scary for some people; it might be silly and stupid. But folks, incidents can be judged, but not scars.

By Sreya.

CTK’s Retro Curriculum: Iconic or Overrated? A Gen Z Reflection

As I prepare for a teaching career, I’ve started asking a fundamental question: What did the teachers before me believe about economics and how it should be taught?

That curiosity led me to the undergraduate economics curriculum framed by Dr. C. T. Kurien at Madras Christian College (MCC). This blog post offers a Gen Z reflection on a syllabus created over half a century ago—with the humility to admit I can’t fully judge it through today’s lens.

 Syllabus Born During Protest

During the mid-1960s, when the anti-Hindi agitation was at its peak and protests were happening across Tamil Nadu, colleges were shut for a brief period as students actively participated. That’s when the faculty members of the Economics Department, under the leadership of then HoD Dr. C. T. Kurien (CTK), sat together to draft a curriculum that was bold and unconventional. It's important to note that MCC did not yet have academic autonomy. They created the syllabus in anticipation of implementing it once autonomy was granted. Dr. CTK, deeply dissatisfied with the prevailing syllabus, aimed to expose students to schools of thought beyond the mainstream neoclassical framework. The syllabus was implemented in 1978, when MCC finally gained autonomy. Interestingly, by that time, Dr. CTK had moved to MIDS and taken over as its director, so he wasn’t at MCC when the syllabus was actually rolled out. A decade later, in 1988, the students themselves reviewed the curriculum as part of the department magazine Economique, with Dr. Selvaraj as staff-in-charge, Mr. Vijay R. as the editor, and Mr. Balasubramaniyam as the sub-editor. 

The syllabus opens with a preamble that frames its objective clearly: “skills to recognize and analyze the working of actual economics and specific economic problems within the context.” The ambition is admirable and signals a shift from rote and abstract learning toward real-world engagement with economic ideas—something still relevant and impressive today.But vision is one thing. Execution is another.

Many students at MCC during the 1970s weren’t fluent in English and struggled with access to the prescribed textbooks. So while the preamble was ambitious, its impact depended heavily on who was learning—and what support they received.

Credits: Ms. Cyra Tony 

 

Did It Fulfill Student Aspirations?

This is a more difficult question to answer definitively. I didn’t live through the curriculum. I didn’t study under it. And so, I hesitate to speak for the students of that era.

What can be said, though, is this: the curriculum tried to engage students in a deeper, more meaningful study of economics. It wasn’t afraid to include complex tools and emerging frameworks, such as game theory and systems analysis. It introduced programming languages—COBOL and FORTRAN IV—at a time when computers were virtually nonexistent in Indian classrooms. It devoted three full semesters to studying the Indian economy in depth. These choices suggest that the creators had high expectations of their students and wanted to stretch their intellectual capacities.

Whether students felt supported in meeting those expectations is another question altogether.

Did It Align with Other Indian Universities?

This is where CTK’s curriculum struggled the most—and, arguably, where it ultimately failed.

The program failed to train students rigorously in traditional microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics, the key papers in economics. This hindered the students when they transitioned to leading academic institutions in India, like the Delhi School of Economics or the colleges in Delhi University. The syllabus was innovative, but it didn’t align with the dominant academic framework of Indian economics education. As a result, it lacked portability. What made it unique also made it isolating. While Indian universities updated their offerings to reflect changes in the discipline, CTK’s remained frozen. The initial vision was bold, but its custodians failed to carry that momentum forward. What started as a progressive model eventually became outdated. A paper that stood out was “Development of Economic Ideas,” which appeared in semesters III and V.  The course intended to expose students to Classical, Marxian, Neoclassical, Keynesian, and socialist schools os economic thought, which was rare and commendable. However, these were neither rigorous nor application-oriented. If this course had oriented students to apply the theories to analyse macroeconomic issues from multiple lenses, it would have been a remarkable milestone in the teaching of economics.

Was the Curriculum Internally Consistent?

It is important to note that the syllabus was internally consistent and coherently structured. The course Quantitative Analysis, in particular, followed a logical progression. However, the question of which school of thought this mathematical framework was aligned with remains debatable. Dr. C. T. Kurien’s dissatisfaction with the neoclassical school—and his intent to move away from it—seems to be in tension with the syllabus’s reliance on mathematical tools typical of neoclassical economics. On the other hand, the Institutional Analysis paper demonstrated strong continuity and was thoughtfully developed across the program.

Were the Contents Adequate and Up to Date?

Adequate? Not quite. The syllabus had vision, but it lacked full execution. It introduced powerful ideas without always giving students the tools to wield them effectively. It balanced precariously between being too radical for the mainstream and too incomplete for the truly alternative. It could have become a model for heterodox economics education in India—but only if it had gone further.
Up to date? The curriculum definitely was up to date and it was in fact visionary. The inclusion of advanced topics like systems analysis, game theory, and electronic data processing in economics  are admirable and was fore sited for Indian context at that time. The integration of such cutting-edge tools in the 1970s and 1980s made the undergraduate curriculum exceptional.

Conclusion: A Curriculum With a Vision, Not a Map

CTK’s economics curriculum wasn’t overrated. It was iconic in intent, and in many ways, courageous. It broke away from the safe, standardized models of Indian economics education and tried to do something different. It wanted students to think critically, use data meaningfully, and engage with India’s economy in real, grounded ways. But vision without infrastructure is rarely enough. Without consistent revision, pedagogical support, and alignment with broader academic pathways, the curriculum faltered. As a Gen Z student looking back, I see a curriculum that tried to do what we’re still asking for today: more relevance, more tools, more critical thinking. It didn’t fully succeed—but it dared to try.

Gratitude:

I extend my sincere thanks to Mr. Arun Koshy, whose guidance and support were invaluable to this work. His insights, assistance, and efforts to trace archival details greatly enriched my understanding of the curriculum.

Dr. Marilyn Grace Augustine, for facilitating access to the college archives, which provided essential material on the syllabus and its review.

Ms. Cyra Tony, for graciously allowing me to use her abstract artwork inspired by the syllabus, which adds a thoughtful visual dimension to this blog post.

By Sreya.