have previously written that the traditional classroom has transformed into a vastly different institution and that conventional teaching methodologies are no longer relevant. This needs to be explained, and debated, so that academics can shape the future of the classroom rather than be caught unawares.

Traditional classrooms are relevant now only in the school sector. A hierarchical structure where information is imparted from a teacher to students makes sense in a school setting, where the dissemination of knowledge is a function of power, in that the teacher’s assumption of absolute knowledge creates the impression that the student as learner has no claim to knowledge whatsoever. Thus, the student has to be told what to think.

The university sector has also long been modelled on this ideal of education as a trade, where the student pays a fee for buying knowledge from a teacher who is supposed to have that knowledge to sell. The university acts as a mediator, providing its premises and managing finances.

Since the onslaught of technical advancement and the possibilities being rapidly opened by artificial intelligence, the function of memory is evolving. In the conventional model of teaching and learning, the teacher tells students facts (for example, the multiplication tables, the rules of grammar the dates of important historical events) and the students memorise those and make those a part of their permanent memory.

With technology, the internet, and now the AI, it has become unnecessary to remember facts (or rules of any kind). Before the internet, it made sense that people had to remember facts and there was a high premium placed on being able to memorise and recall facts. Thus, at the core of the classroom was a teacher who narrated facts to students who received those as receptacles, memorised and reproduced them. Thus, the cycle of reproduction of information was the purpose of education. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, this is still true of school and intermediate education. Crucially, this is also the model at many universities.

However, universities are not supposed to be sites for the reproduction of information, but for the production of knowledge. This understanding is absent in some of Pakistan’s higher education institutions.

For the production of knowledge, universities need to develop a culture based on promoting research-oriented teaching and discouraging lecturing in the classroom. By this, I do not mean the research that already goes into teaching. The end goal of the classroom needs to be to produce research.

An obvious objection to this idea will be from non-PhD university faculty or PhD faculty who do not have a research profile. Delivering lectures prepared on a rote-learning format is far easier than organising a seminar class across 48 hours in a semester, and ensuring that rather than conventional questions that require answers prepared from textbooks, the course grade is determined by a rubric-based assessment of original thinking backed by research conventions in the respective academic fields.

For this universities have to recognise that the grading systems currently in place are redundant, and do not really differentiate between the abilities of a student and their ability to interpret a system. Thus, a student has to have a certain kind of smartness to excel on the grading system in place in our universities.

Then, awarding a student a ‘C’ serves no purpose except to convince the student that they are a failure at navigating a system based in competition and reproducing answers. If teaching can be oriented towards research and the production of knowledge, the final ‘grade’ should be simultaneously made irrelevant by instituting a ‘Pass/ No Pass’ policy in the university sector.

This way, students can be encouraged to prove their creative, research and problem-solving abilities without the constraints of a transcript that must look good for them to find jobs. In this regard, the American model of anti-racist pedagogy, though from a different social context, offers several advantages.

One model of a non-traditional, modern classroom is that of a ‘flipped’ classroom. It is heartening to see that some universities away from the urban centres like Lahore are taking the lead in adapting this model, where the purpose of the classroom is discussion and engagement. The reading of the course text is a part of the student’s work outside the classroom.

Reading the assigned texts before coming to class helps students concentrate on discussing the larger problems at stake in their respective fields. A hybrid model of education where pre-recorded lectures by experts are played in half of the class and the remaining class is taught by the respective teachers around discussing the video lecture, is also in place at some universities, and has a lot of potential for success.

Academics must also embrace the role of technology, including AI, in making education accessible to all. Of course, the ability to conjure a wealth of resources at a click is scary for anyone who is used to delivering the same lectures for years on end. Students can now challenge their teachers.

For example, an introductory lecture on the tenets of Romantic poetry is now redundant, because students can read hundreds of articles online and watch hundreds of videos on YouTube which will contain way more ideas than the one-and-a-half hours of a lecture delivered in class. Instead, having them look up Romanticism before the class, introducing them to the central debates in a brief introduction, and then allowing them to discuss the various sources they have explored, will ensure a multiplicity of perspectives that is not possible in the traditional lecture mode.

What is required now is for academics to find ways to review their classroom policies, and challenge themselves. Students in the university today are not dunces who need to be told what to think. They are a different kind of humans and their educational needs are different from what they used to be a decade ago. University teachers must not refuse to acknowledge that and adapt.

The writer holds a PhD in literature