What do you think about Early Colleges?

What do you think about the senior/junior culture in Indian colleges?

• 1.)What do you think about the fact that sometimes a "junior" has to address a senior as "sir" even though sometimes the "junior" may be smarter or more skillful than a "senior"? 2.) Is it right to have this sort of a culture in colleges considering that colleges are different from workplaces? In the workplace there is an order of hierarchy in which work is done and there are genuine levels of seniority (at least, a lot of the time) associated with skill and ownership. In a college, (almost) everyone is studying on daddy's (or a guardian's) money. 3.) Is it right for "seniors" to demand respect from "juniors" simply because they're in a higher semester? 4.) Would a "senior" ever address a "junior" as "sir" if the "junior" were more skillful than the "senior" ?

• Answer:

  Thanks for A2A. I received my formal education from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, an institute which was once famous for some harsh ragging practices, so much so, that strict disciplinary rules were enforced to curb any occurrence of such an incident around 5 years back. So by the time I joined college ragging was pretty much an obsolete concept for BIT, Mesra. There were harmful repercussions, however. I remember seniors avoiding to talk to us in our First Year from the fear of getting caught by the anti-ragging committee. But to say that Ragging is the only form of interaction seniors can have with juniors is outright stupid. Coming to the overly highlighted salutation of your question "Sir", I dont see any point in making a big deal about it at all. Let me consider the 4 points one at a time. 1. I think calling a senior by "sir" has little to do with the technical expertise that the senior posses and is more related to the fact that he is elder and has been a part of the college for at least an year more than any junior. In India we are constantly taught to respect our elders. Do we look at the skill set of our elders before addressing them as our seniors. Don't we all have an elder cousin who we know is dumber than us but still we address them as "bhaiyya/didi"(Hindi for big brother/big sister). 2. I think in a way its a very good exercise that we are habituated to call some of the seniors whom we consider skill wise inferior to us as "sir" because in a country like ours where more than half of the organizations still have time bound promotions as a part of their staffing policy, we are destined to come across some individuals at our work place who will be occupying higher positions in the hierarchy and will be drawing better compensations although being skillfully not as good as us, but still we will be forced to address them as "sir" and much more formally than the college interactions. So its good to be prepared in advance, and isn't college after all about "learning how to learn." 3. Well respect can never be demanded, it is only earned and anyone who doesn't know this simple fact doesn't deserve any kind of respect I guess. 4. Again what is the big deal in the salutation "sir". Let "sir" be a word used by a person in a lower semester to address a person in a higher semester. There are other ways of appreciation that a senior can show to acknowledge the skills of his junior. Being in Comp Science Department I have a couple of juniors who are far more technically skillful than me and I keep telling them that and even respect them for their abilities,but I have never felt the need to use the word "sir" to show the admiration or respect I possess for my juniors.