Jeyaseelan Gnaanseelan
My article appeared in Online Uthayan, the English website of the Tamil Newspaper, Uthayan on 6th November 2012.
http://onlineuthayan.com/english-news/articles/24y2s2e1g1g1
'Sir' and 'Madam' in Sri Lankan Universities- the Discourse suppressing creativity and criticism?
Just imagine you are a senior lecturer possessing doctorate.
While you are conducting a lecture, if one student of Bachelor’s program
raises his hand and says, ‘Rajaratnam, could I ask you a question?’
While you are conducting a lecture, if one student of Bachelor’s program
raises his hand and says, ‘Rajaratnam, could I ask you a question?’
what will be the emotional reaction from both you and the rest of the students?
But it is happening elsewhere! My intention in this article is that it must be
an ice breaker for those university dons who are obsessed
with their power distance from their students as well as from their junior staff.
Globally, there are large differences in the way students normally expect
to address their university teachers. In the radically developed
Northern European and North American countries, students are
more informal and address their lecturers with their first name even though they possess
academic titles such as Dr. or Professor. However, students and lecturers use
these academic titles also in certain formal contexts but the use does not bear ‘power distance’.
But it is happening elsewhere! My intention in this article is that it must be
an ice breaker for those university dons who are obsessed
with their power distance from their students as well as from their junior staff.
Globally, there are large differences in the way students normally expect
to address their university teachers. In the radically developed
Northern European and North American countries, students are
more informal and address their lecturers with their first name even though they possess
academic titles such as Dr. or Professor. However, students and lecturers use
these academic titles also in certain formal contexts but the use does not bear ‘power distance’.
Let me state an important example to reduce power distance from outside the university context.
In USA, the president of the United States is addressed as ‘Mr. President’ or ‘Ms. President’.
They have got rid of glorifying the president with the words of salutation, ‘His Excellency’ and so on.
But in Asia, we continue to use these ornamental words belonging to the eras of kingdoms. In USA,
it is purposely planned to address like this so that it is expected that the power distance between
the American president and the American citizens will be reduced and the people will feel
‘sort of equality’ psychologically and it will give them confidence even to criticize the president in public.
In USA, the president of the United States is addressed as ‘Mr. President’ or ‘Ms. President’.
They have got rid of glorifying the president with the words of salutation, ‘His Excellency’ and so on.
But in Asia, we continue to use these ornamental words belonging to the eras of kingdoms. In USA,
it is purposely planned to address like this so that it is expected that the power distance between
the American president and the American citizens will be reduced and the people will feel
‘sort of equality’ psychologically and it will give them confidence even to criticize the president in public.
Confidence and first names
Is it psychologically healthy to address the lecturers with their first names, which is something radical
and almost impossible in Sri Lanka? So far, we have allowed the students to address us with
our first names but with the compl(i)ement, ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ at the end, for example, ‘Bandula sir’ or
‘Rohini Madam’ which is typically Asian in usage, whereas, a British student will never address,
‘John sir’ in British Universities. Will we allow our students at least, to call or address us as
‘Mr/Dr/Professor Bandula’ in our lecture halls? very rarely indeed. So what forbids us from asking
our students and our junior lecturers to stop calling us ‘sir’ and ‘madam’?- our culture?
our age? our qualifications? our seniority in profession? Or is it just the power distance we want
to have always to control and dominate them discipline-wise so that we can survive evading
by not responding to or respecting their radical thinking and expressions of creativity and criticism?
Are we afraid of them? Do we want to maintain a gap between our students and ourselves and
a gap between junior lecturers and senior lecturers for this intentional or unintentional purpose?
Will the heads of the departments, deans of the faculties, rectors of the campuses,
directors of the institutes, registrars, bursars and vice chancellors of the universities,
chairmen of the committees allow both the students and staff to write to them as
‘Dear Head’, ‘Dear Dean’, ‘Dear Rector’, ‘Dear Director’, ‘Dear Registrar’,
‘Dear Bursar’, ‘Dear Vice-chancellor’, ‘Dear Chairman’ rather than ‘Dear sir’ or ‘Dear Madam’?
and almost impossible in Sri Lanka? So far, we have allowed the students to address us with
our first names but with the compl(i)ement, ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ at the end, for example, ‘Bandula sir’ or
‘Rohini Madam’ which is typically Asian in usage, whereas, a British student will never address,
‘John sir’ in British Universities. Will we allow our students at least, to call or address us as
‘Mr/Dr/Professor Bandula’ in our lecture halls? very rarely indeed. So what forbids us from asking
our students and our junior lecturers to stop calling us ‘sir’ and ‘madam’?- our culture?
our age? our qualifications? our seniority in profession? Or is it just the power distance we want
to have always to control and dominate them discipline-wise so that we can survive evading
by not responding to or respecting their radical thinking and expressions of creativity and criticism?
Are we afraid of them? Do we want to maintain a gap between our students and ourselves and
a gap between junior lecturers and senior lecturers for this intentional or unintentional purpose?
Will the heads of the departments, deans of the faculties, rectors of the campuses,
directors of the institutes, registrars, bursars and vice chancellors of the universities,
chairmen of the committees allow both the students and staff to write to them as
‘Dear Head’, ‘Dear Dean’, ‘Dear Rector’, ‘Dear Director’, ‘Dear Registrar’,
‘Dear Bursar’, ‘Dear Vice-chancellor’, ‘Dear Chairman’ rather than ‘Dear sir’ or ‘Dear Madam’?
Encouraging innovativeness
All these questions are definitely inconvenient and irritating to many of us holding these positions. The answers are unwelcome to many Sri Lankan university dons. In the name of culture, seniority, and profession, if we are going to suppress innovativeness and independent thinking and acting of our students, we are killing ‘the scientific and objective attitudes’ of our young Sri Lankan undergraduates. Maintaining power and authority can work elsewhere, definitely not at the universities where, right or wrong, independent thinking and doing should be encouraged. Blaming the students and junior staff for their excesses sometimes resulted in will not be the right excuse to main control and domination. Honestly speaking, we should tolerate their ‘moderate or constructive excesses’ rather than punishing them, I would say. The younger generation always wants to break free from the existing cultural, religious, social, linguistic, conventional establishments. It does not matter whether these establishments are right or wrong. Scientific curiosity dictates trial and error method for innovation and advancement. The use of sir and madam definitely contributes to this suppression. Though I accept this foul play practiced among us, I am also one of the academics passively accepting the address of ‘sir’ by the students. But I promise that I am going to experiment this new venture among my students and junior staff gradually. All of us will agree that the west has developed to this extent because their younger generation is free from all the linguistic, cultural, religious and economic shackles. They think fresh and practice ‘flesh and blood’. It gives them confidence. They are not afraid of what the lecturers would say or do to them.
Anne-Wil Harzing, (2010) confirms that the different addresses in different countries are to “general cultural differences, such as the higher level of informality in Northern Europe and North America and the generally higher level of power distance in Asian and Latin countries”. However, in USA and India, typically all the university teachers whether junior or senior lecturers or professors are generally addressed as ‘Professor’ (not exclusively for those who are ‘full professors’) and ‘Doctor’ is also popularly used because it is found that most of the university teaching staff are PhD holders. In USA, though they use ‘professor’ or ‘doctor’ for addressing everyone, it does not have that implication of a high level of formality or power distance as it might be in other countries like ours.
Socio-cultural and business context
The courtesy conventions in Sri Lankan Universities are the borrowings from the western models. In modern British English, very rarely people are addressed as Sir or Madam, except in situations which might dictate a certain amount of politeness - for example when speaking to an elderly person literally or figuratively. Another context where these words of courtesy are used is business. Politeness enhances sales, consequently, profitability. However, it is true that, in the United States, Sir and Ma'am are very much alive and well mostly in the same contexts. Then what about their use in universities? How do they have an impact on developing the creative and critical skills of both the teachers and students?
Educational context
Students address teachers during a lecture\class at Sri Lankan university as ‘Sir’, ‘Madam’ (ma’am’ in short) or Miss (even the married female teacher is addressed as ‘Miss.’ They pronounce the ‘s’ sound not the ‘z’ sound which is in ‘Ms’. However, when they address them in writing, they use, ‘Ms’ or ‘Mrs’, if married, or ‘Miss’ for both married and unmarried in informal writing). "Ms." (Ms. + surname) may be the preferred choice of both married and single women since it does not indicate whether or not the woman is married. But our school students call the teachers at school as ‘Sir’ for male teachers and ‘teacher’ or ‘Miss’ (or ‘ma’am’ in well established highly urbanized schools) for female teachers. But in the UK nowadays, students call the teachers at school and universities as Mr/Mrs/Miss + surname largely. However, in the US, they use the appropriate honorific and the first name as well, “Professor/Mr/Dr. John, I do not understand the example.” However, radically, there are many college or university lecturers and professors who prefer to be called by their first name.
In the same way, it is practiced in the written communication as well. “Dear Sir’ and “Dear Madam’ is of popular use among the schools and universities not only between students and teachers or administrators but also between teachers and administrators, and between senior lecturers and junior lecturers. Sometimes this usage causes power equation problems. Senior lecturers and professors have to address less qualified or less experienced senior academics or senior or junior academic and non-academic administrators as ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ with ‘uneasiness’ sometimes. Please note that I am just saying how they feel; I do not justify ‘their uneasiness’.
Power distance and creativeness and criticism
It is evident that the west is slowly getting rid of these usages of power distance. Psychologically both students and university teachers experience ‘barriers’ for expressing their creativity and criticism when they ‘learn under’ or ‘work under’ academics and senior academics or heads of the department, deans of the faculty or vice chancellor of the university or registrar or bursar of the university. University environment must be a place for students and academics where they should learn not ‘under’ senior lecturers but ‘with’ their guidance. Therefore, students, while learning in or outside the lecture halls, addressing the lecturers as ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’, may cause the construction of ideological attitudinal position that they are inferior to lecturers or senior lecturers in expressing creative and critical views and consequently withdraw from sharing them with them. Therefore, students calling them by the appropriate honorific and their first name (Mr./Mrs./Ms/Dr./Prof. Rajan) will definitely develop confidence, independent spirit and free will to think and act innovatively. This practice will allay fear, shyness, reservation, inferiority complex, dependent mindset of a university student and will get rid of the ideology- teachers KNOW everything and students ARE TO KNOW everything; teachers have power and authority on that particular discipline and students have to be passive, responsive and submissive to whatever teachers think and act. The same situation is applicable to the junior lecturers and lecturers in Sri Lanka. Our tradition is to address the senior staff as ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ orally or in written forms.
It is true that situations may arise and lead to confusion and offense in the relationship between the student and the teacher if it is allowed to be misused or abused. But the problem is that we Asians are more traditional and conventional; we feel secure when new things are not tried among us and changes must not be allowed to destabilize our existing systems we feel at home with whether they are right or wrong. Unlike the student community of the west, who are so outspoken and smart in interacting with the teachers and administrators without any psychological inhibitions, our students terribly suffer from reservation, fear, shyness, and hesitation in trying to interact with the lecturers as well as even with their peers from the opposite sex. Majority is always silent, passive and meek in the lecture halls, afflicted by many psychological inhibitions. This linguistic usage will definitely give them confidence to be smart with their lecturers and junior lecturers with their senior lecturers and administrators. On the other hand, our students will feel serious discomfort when we invite them to address us by our given or first name only or our first names with the academic titles. The historically transmitted social constructions in the language of address fed to us from birth onwards will discourage them to do so. They will feel that these new usages will be disrespectful to the teachers and administrators. However, gradually we have to train both the university teachers and students for experimenting new linguistic usages which give confidence to reach the climax of human development.
Flexible interaction
For teachers and administrators to understand their students and junior staff better, they have to build the rapport that is crucial in maintaining a healthy student–teacher or lecturer-administrator relationship. Anne-Wil Harzing, (2010) advises that being aware about students' different perceptions of "distance" between student and teacher help us to think about different ways to engage students. This can be extremely useful in exemplifying how interactions- formal and informal-can also be impacted upon by people's attitude.
Tuesday , 06 November 2012
