Not Everything That Matters in a Classroom Can Be Mapped

By- Amlan Baisya

Assistant Professor , Department of Literature and Languages,

Easwari School of Liberal Arts, SRM University AP

NEP 2020. OBE. CO PO Mapping. Attainment Calculation. These are some of the buzzwords all Indian teachers grapple with every now and then. I do too. A few days back, I was wondering how a course on Ethics and Human Values could have measurable and mappable outcomes—that I would not accept dowry at any cost, that I would ensure no gender discrimination happens in my family or work place, that I would always try to stand by what I think is right and not necessarily beneficial to me—since when such changes become measurable? Have we developed any scale to measure such outcomes? Since when and how did Liberal Arts education start valuing immediately measurable outcomes? Strangely, the next morning, I found myself writing a sentence that looked perfectly official and strangely lifeless: “At the end of the course, the learner will be able to analyse literary texts using appropriate critical frameworks.” It sounded correct. It satisfied the required format. It could be mapped, measured, uploaded, verified and shown during academic audits.

What exactly does it mean to “be able to analyse” a poem? Does it mean identifying metaphors? Applying feminism, Marxism or postcolonial theory? Writing a coherent answer in an exam? Disagreeing with a critic? Sitting with confusion? Feeling disturbed by a line and not knowing why? Returning to the same poem years later and discovering that it has changed because the reader has changed?

Outcome-Based Education, or OBE, has become one of the most influential frameworks in higher education. In principle, it sounds reasonable. Students should know what they are expected to learn. Teachers should design courses with clarity.

Institutions should ensure that education is not random. There is nothing wrong with transparency, planning or accountability.

The problem begins when every form of learning is forced into measurable outcomes. This is especially troubling in the Liberal Arts. Subjects like literature, philosophy, history, political thought, cultural studies and communication do not always move in straight lines. They do not simply transfer information from teacher to student. They are supposed to unsettle assumptions, sharpen judgment, complicate easy answers and expand imagination. These are real outcomes, but they are not always visible at the end of a semester. OBE often assumes that learning can be clearly predicted before the course begins. A teacher writes Course Outcomes, maps them with Programme Outcomes, aligns them with assessments, measures attainment and closes the loop. The language is neat. The process looks objective. However, has the classroom ever been neat? On the contrary, if it is neat, is it a classroom at all?

In a literature class, a student may enter with the aim of passing an exam and leave with a new understanding of gender, caste, memory, violence or desire. Another may not speak for the whole semester but may carry one classroom discussion into a private transformation. A third may perform poorly in a test but begin to read more seriously. How do we measure this? Where do we enter it in the attainment sheet?

One fallacy of OBE is that what can be measured is automatically rendered more important than what cannot be measured. This is a dangerous assumption. The most meaningful forms of Liberal Arts learning are often slow, indirect and difficult to quantify. A student learning to listen to an opposing view, to recognise the limits of their own experience, to question inherited prejudice, or to become comfortable with ambiguity may not produce an immediately measurable output. Yet these may be among the most valuable outcomes of the course; for that matter, of education itself.

A student asks an unexpected question. A poem opens into a discussion on mental health. A story leads to a debate on language and class. A historical text suddenly becomes relevant to a current social anxiety. These moments may not sit comfortably within the pre-written outcome, but they are often where genuine learning happens. Liberal Arts education thrives on openness. It allows students to encounter texts, ideas and people that do not merely confirm what they already know. It teaches them that not every question has one correct answer. It asks them to think historically, ethically and imaginatively. If OBE becomes too rigid, it risks turning this openness into a bureaucratic performance.

There is also the problem of language. OBE has brought with it a vocabulary that often feels alien to the spirit of teaching: attainment, mapping, measurable indicators, rubrics, targets, closure, delivery. These words are not useless. They may help in administration. But when they dominate academic life, they change how teachers think about their work.

A teacher no longer simply discusses a poem; she “delivers CO2.” A student no longer wrestles with an idea; he “attains Level 3 competency.” A discussion is no longer a living exchange; it becomes evidence for a file. The danger is not only bureaucratic burden. The danger is that education itself begins to sound like a manufacturing process. This is exactly why OBE often sits more comfortably with technical or skill-based courses than with Liberal Arts courses. If a student is learning to operate a machine, write a formal report or solve a defined mathematical problem, outcomes can be stated and assessed with relative precision. But if a student is learning to read Dostoevsky, Ambedkar, Shakespeare, Mahasweta Devi or Toni Morrison, the outcome cannot be reduced to a simple behavioural statement.

What should be the measurable outcome of reading a disturbing short story? That the student can summarise the plot? Identify themes? Explain narrative technique? These are useful, but limited. A powerful literary text may also produce discomfort, empathy, disagreement or moral unease. It may make a student less certain, not more. In Liberal Arts, confusion is sometimes not a failure of learning but the beginning of it. This does not mean Liberal Arts teachers should reject structure. Romanticising chaos is not the answer. Courses need design. Students need guidance. Assessment must be fair. Institutions must be accountable. The issue is not whether outcomes should exist, but whether outcomes should control the entire imagination of education. A better model would treat outcomes as signposts, not cages. They should guide the journey without deciding every possible destination. A course outcome in literature, for example, can say that students will learn to interpret texts in relation to form, context and argument. But it must also leave room for unexpected insight, personal engagement and critical disagreement.

Assessment too must become more imaginative. Instead of relying only on tests that measure recall or predictable analysis, Liberal Arts courses can include reflective journals, oral presentations, annotated readings, creative-critical responses, peer discussions, field observations and portfolios. Such methods may still produce evidence, but they respect the complexity of learning. The problem is that institutions and established systems often want the appearance of measurable precision more than the reality of intellectual growth. Numbers are comforting. Percentages look objective. Graphs look professional. But a high attainment score does not necessarily mean a student has become a better thinker. It may only mean that the assessment was easy to map.

Teachers know this. Students know it too. A classroom may produce excellent documentation and still remain intellectually dull. Another classroom may produce untidy, difficult, alive conversations that change how students think, even if the evidence is harder to present in a spreadsheet.

The Liberal Arts must defend the value of such difficult learning. At their best, these disciplines do not merely prepare students for jobs. They prepare them for life with other people. They teach interpretation in a world full of misinformation. They teach empathy in a society full of difference. They teach argument in a democracy full of noise. They teach memory in a culture that often forgets too easily.

Can all of this be mapped neatly to outcomes? Only partially. And that partiality must be honestly admitted.

The real fallacy of OBE, I repeat, is not that outcomes are unnecessary. The fallacy is believing that education is valuable only when its outcomes are immediately visible, measurable and administratively convenient. Liberal Arts learning often works quietly. It may appear years later in the way a student reads a newspaper, questions a stereotype, writes an email, votes, leads a team, apologises, listens, or refuses injustice.

No course file can fully capture that.

The purpose of Liberal Arts education is not simply to produce students who can “demonstrate” learning at the end of a course. It is to help them become people who continue to learn after the course has ended.

Can this be mapped in a spreadsheet? The teacher knows the answer; so does the student.

Uniformity, in any form or context, is a dubious partner to settle down with.

Amlan Baisya

(Assistant Professor, Department of Literature and Languages, ESLA, SRM University- AP)