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It's the (lack of) education, stupid

It's the (lack of) education, stupid

Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Pioneer
Date: August 13, 2002

This fortnight is particularly rich in issues of national concern, what with the Election Commission and the President both going to Gujarat, and the continued turmoil in Jammu & Kashmir. But I'm going to give it all a miss for a matter of more fundamental concern in a nation that tends to dodge serious issues of development.

For some time, parents like myself have been unhappy at the functioning of the educational system. An ordinary public school charges well over twenty thousand rupees per annum, per child, and it is legitimate to ask if it's worth it. I would like to offer some comments for wider public debate, and pray that they be accepted in the spirit in which they are presented.

My concerns are deeper than the contrived textbook-curriculum controversy agitating leftists, and deserve serious debate and introspection. Some issues call for feedback from society, particularly parents, and cannot be left to academics who may be aping a fashion from somewhere else, without thought to its utility or pitfalls. Well-planned questionnaires distributed to parents through the school system could yield valuable data in a cost effective and time bound manner.

The paradigms of this discussion are determined by the fact that the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is working to simplify the science and mathematics question papers at secondary and senior secondary level, and is determined to enforce a grading system as opposed to old-fashioned marks. Besides, the National Human Rights Commission (god help us!) has threatened to look at the load of the school bag. Finally, there is the issue of parental harassment in the form of excessive holiday homework without commensurate classwork in the course of the academic year.

Having observed the school scene closely, I am aware that portions of the curriculum has been unduly 'heavy'. During the Board examinations, a common complaint was that the mathematics paper was too lengthy to be completed by most students as the questions were indirect and needed to be understood before being solved. The CBSE's decision to rectify this by simplifying the questions and reducing their number is therefore welcome. Examinations are supposed to judge what the student has learned over the academic year(s), and not humiliate him up by telling him what he does not know.

However, the issue of grades needs a rethink. Academics opted for grades when pressure drove students to commit suicide when they did not get the expected marks. Certainly one should not be so driven, and parents and children should be counselled that the world does not end if you do not get the first thing you want.

Still, I maintain with a full sense of responsibility that grades have only destroyed academic standards. They instill complacency in place of honest competition and hard work. Since competition is ultimately unavoidable in life, the deliberate dulling of the intellect at school level has a deleterious impact. With marks there is no fudging of academic achievement; a child with eighty marks cannot think he is equal to the one with ninety-two marks, without putting in more effort. I reiterate that the competition must be healthy, because life is much larger than the classroom. Yet the evasion of contests at class level, where it is manageable, will not equip one for the struggles of life.

Educationists have understood this reality, which is why they have added to student stress by introducing entrance tests for virtually every admission in higher education. First it was only engineering and medical streams, now it is being extended to other areas. As the course for these tests is at variance with the school curriculum, ambitious children carry a greater burden of studies than our educationists formally recommend. Moreover, parents have to bear the added burden of expensive coaching classes.

Surprisingly, educationists have not come up with standardized aptitude tests like GRE for such courses, when they are otherwise quick to copy the USA! Perhaps this would smash the tuition industry in which academics are major players. I find many academics arguing foolishly that in America the teachers do not mind if you cannot spell properly, or write incorrect grammar, provided you can communicate your meaning somehow. What nonsense!

Yet parents commonly complain that teachers do not correct spelling mistakes in the classwork, and that children resent it when parents point out errors. The teachers don't like it either, and it is "taken out" on children if their parents dare complain. In my schooldays, class work and homework were checked diligently. All mistakes had to be corrected at the end of each lesson, which was again scrupulously checked to ensure that the mistakes were not repeated.

But by far the greatest scandal is the issue of holiday homework. In my days, the academic year began in January, and the first term examinations were held in May before the summer vacations. In such a system, the homework (however excessive) had a relationship with work done in school. There was also an off-beat assignment on a single topic, chosen by the student and presented according to his imagination. The entire homework was collected the day school reopened, and checked thoroughly. In mathematics, we took turns to solve the questions on the board and made the necessary corrections in our books.

At present, the school year begins in April and ends on the first of May on account of the heat wave of recent years. As the schools have not done enough teaching to conduct even the first unit examinations, these are usually held a month after the vacations. Yet the insensate piling up of homework, in each and every subject, has to be seen to be believed. There is no question that the teachers have equipped the students to handle this workload. It is the felt experience of innumerable parents that activities recommended by the CBSE for conducting in school over the entire academic year, are simply delegated en masse to parents as a vacation lampoon.

There is complete insensitivity to the fact that all parents are not automatically on a two-month vacation the minute school closes; nor are all parents equipped to handle homework that even the teachers are not confident of coping with. But the most unconscionable aspect of this exercise is the sheer indifference of the teachers to the entire effort when school reopens. It can take more than a week for the work to be collected, if it is collected. The grading is ad hoc; students feel crushed that their efforts to conceive and execute the projects are not appreciated. All too often, the checking has been so cursory that teachers are not even aware that the homework was not completed because both parents and students found it too voluminous to cope with!

On the obverse side is the reluctance to give regular homework to students in the course of the academic year, which leaves classroom education grossly incomplete. Teachers are aware of this, but they do not want to burden themselves with correction work, so they hide behind the slogan of not overloading students. As the NHRC looks at the kilo-calories of the school bag, it should look sharply at the kilo-bytes as well. Education is about building competencies, not incompetents.
 


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