Education is expected to remedy the perpetuation of the beliefs and practices through which patriarchy operates, but it can hardly do this when its own rituals are no less ossified and oppressive.
The flogging of Vanita, a Class XII student in Tiruchi, by a temple priest figures in a recent article in Frontline (Ritual whipping, issue of November 6). Vanita’s parents are anxious about the Board examinations she is going to face soon. Apparently, the parents believe that an evil spirit has entered Vanita and they expect that she will be able to study harder after receiving a few lashes from a priest. The Frontline story places the ritual flogging of girls and women by a temple authority in the larger context of patriarchy and the superstitions it promotes. Education is expected to remedy the perpetuation of the beliefs and practices through which patriarchy operates, but education can hardly do this when its own rituals are no less ossified and oppressive. The ritual which has proved highly resistant to reforms is that of the Board examinations. It is also the ritual which acts like a termite to destroy any reform efforts in curriculum and teacher training. The ritual of the Board examinations has been shaping the annual as well as everyday life of our schools and colleges since colonial days. And, it has proved remarkably resilient.
Let us look at some of the components of this powerful ritual. Every school follows a seasonal calendar to ensure that all actors — the principal, teachers, students and their parents — remain alert to their roles in the ritual. The principal ensures that teachers exercise no agency or autonomy in deciding the number of periods they will take to complete a topic. The number ordained by the Board is religiously complied with. I cannot think of a principal who exercises leadership to encourage teachers to take howsoever long they want in order to sustain children’s interest in a topic. Teachers who want, or actually try, to do such a thing, end up being told by either the principal or the parents that children’s time is being wasted. The message is simple: “Focus on the final Board examinations.” Children begin to feel its power as soon as they enter Class I in the primary school or even earlier, in the nursery. By the time they come to the higher secondary level, the students themselves become convinced that marks, and marks alone, matter. Colleges and universities do not consider it necessary to apply their mind to assess the student’s potential. They go by the student’s Board marks. Not surprisingly, parents push children to work for the highest possible aggregate, rather than to pursue individual interest. This kind of pushing destroys the student’s awareness of his or her own special yearning.
Fear of examination
The social ethos injects the young and their parents with a deep sense of insecurity early in life. Teachers start instilling the fear of examination from primary grades onwards. The culture of continuous testing engulfs the primary school curriculum, and in quite a few States the primary classes end with a Board examination. The latest example of a State contemplating this is Delhi. The justification being given is that a Board examination will make teachers work hard. Directorates of education typically believe that teachers cannot be trusted to teach well unless they are scared of their students doing badly in a Board examination. Elite private schools and even Kendriya Vidyalayas use the stick of punitive measures to ensure that teachers concentrate on pushing students to improve their scores. There are no takers for the view that any examination or assessment procedure should make both teachers and students aware of what is to be done next. Such a view would naturally contradict the clandestine procedures adopted by Boards. From paper-setting to evaluation, every step is cloaked in secrecy — and this is what counts as rigour. Those who justify the prevailing system argue that it induces competitiveness. Of course it does, but at the colossal cost of burning out the natural desire to learn in millions of children. They learn early that it pays to act like a mindless robot. Among teachers, the prevailing pattern conveys the message that they cannot be trusted to assess their own students. Board examinations force even the best of teachers to act like coaches and drill masters.
The National Curriculum Framework (NCF-2005) traces the source of a wide range of systemic ills in the public examination system. The NCF attributes the social Darwinist ideology (which says that only the fittest should survive) of our system to the manner in which examinations are conducted by the different Boards. The ideology of social Darwinism is totally incompatible with the Constitution’s vision which asks us to regard every child as a valued participant in the democratic order. If we were guided by the Constitution, we would nurture whatever potential a child has, rather than stigmatise millions by labelling them ‘failed.’ The NCF also criticises the examination system as an obstacle to curricular reform.
Ever since the NCF was approved by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), the NCERT has been anxious about examination reform. The NCERT’s new syllabi and textbooks require a whole new approach to evaluation. These new textbooks encourage children to reflect on problems, to recognise multiple perspectives and to develop the skills required to engage with the debates arising out of such multiplicity of viewpoints in different disciplines. The kind of learning such textbooks encourage cannot be evaluated through the ritual of our traditional examination system. This is why the NCERT tried to develop a dialogue with the CBSE so that a change might be brought about in the typology of the question papers, in the quality of questions, and in the mode of evaluation itself.
Why this struggle has borne limited fruit is an important question to ponder on at this point when the CBSE is planning to make the Class X Board examination optional and to replace marks with grades. This and all other reforms currently under discussion depend for their success on teachers, especially on how much freedom they will be permitted to exercise and how their responsibility will be defined. This is where a huge systemic challenge lies buried. It consists of giving teachers the autonomy to teach and to equip them, through sensible training, with the capacity to cultivate in children the freedom and the desire to learn. The prevailing system obstructs both these freedoms by assigning a fixed number of periods and marks to each topic in the syllabus.
This problem reminds us of the overlapping roles of institutions. When the NCERT prepared its new textbooks, it did so by first designing new syllabi on the basis of the radical perspective on knowledge and learning articulated in NCF-2005. The NCERT’s syllabus did not assign marks to topics, nor did it specify the number of periods within which a topic should be completed. To do so would have been a violation of the NCF perspective according to which a teacher should have the freedom and the skills of time management so that knowledge can be experientially assimilated by children. The NCF also talks about letting individual children learn at their own different paces, instead of rushing them as a herd from topic to topic. As in the past, the CBSE went through the exercise of ‘adopting’ the new NCERT syllabus in every subject, breaking it up into topics and sub-topics, each carrying a specified label of marks and periods.
The story of the CBSE is no different from that of other Boards. They all need to reflect on the pedagogic and epistemological constraints they themselves place on teachers and children by assigning marks to each and every topic and sub-topic and by imposing a tight and arbitrary time-frame on teachers. Whatever little scope there might be in this structure for creative teaching is further constrained by the poor quality of the questions asked. Typically, they are based on the textbook and can be answered correctly by memorisation. The practice of developing model answers further discourages originality and diversity. Hardly any of the scholars and teachers who were involved in the designing of the new syllabus and textbooks is invited to assist in the process of paper-setting or evaluation. The academic resources that most Boards in the country have access to are of poor quality and the recommendation of a committee chaired by Professor Amrik Singh in the early 1990s to strengthen the Boards has remained unheeded.
There is the added question as to how the role and responsibility of the Boards are to be defined. Should they serve mainly as examining bodies, or should they share curricular responsibilities with institutions like the NCERT and the SCERTs? These systemic questions have been waiting for answers for a long time.
(The author is the Director of the NCERT.)
Keywords: CBSE, exams, fear of examination, reform, NCERT
Comments:
Professor Krishna Kumar has, as usual, very articulately and profoundly laid bare the ills that plague childhood education in our country. Of course, we need incisive analyses and reality checks such as the ones Professor Krishna Kumar periodically does, but the more one reads them, the more this helpless feeling of despondency creeps into the heart. Is the situation, then, completely without hope? I can identify with each and every statement put forth by Professor Krishna Kumar, because I am a school principal myself, and I wholeheartedly agree that what has come to be accepted as education by parents, teachers, children, and everyone else, has become almost impossible to change. If you can convince teachers about reform, then the resistance is from parents. If you can convince parents (there are several who are progressive and desperately want their children to have a different experience at school), you are ultimately stumped by the strangle-hold of the requirements of an exam-centric board or council. Far be it from me to be cynical or pessimistic at my stage of life, but it seems that the entire country and contemporary Indian civilization will have to undergo a total intellectual, moral, attitudinal transformation before there can be break from the past, and this, naturally, is unlikely to happen. Meanwhile, let's be grateful for wonderful brains like Professor Krishna Kumar.
Thank You for reflecting on such a crucial issue. You have just put my thoughts into words. I am a final year engineering student and I am facing the same dilemma as the school children do, as mentioned here. I have to cram down terabytes of text each semester without any substantial learning. And when I reflect back on my school days, I realize those days haven't been any different. I have gone through same pressures of conforming to the 'brighter lads' of my class,partaking their habits, their grades, even their whims. Once I remember when I was preparing to write an article for children's section of a local newspaper I was scolded by my relatives for 'wasting time' and not concentrating on upcoming board exams. I was severed by feeling of guilt at such a small age. Eventually writing proved out to be my passion in the coming years.
Education, one thought, is a learning process through which students obtain or develop required knowledge and skills to earn a living and also to lead a meaningful life. In the very nature of things, an education system which caters to a whole society cannot be designed to suit the needs and aspirations of individual students. The collective good has to be the goal in such cases and the concept of “no student left behind” which is getting much attention in the United States should be the guiding principle for the administrators of the education system. The carricula, the teaching methods and the examination system should be designed accordingly. In this respect the new ideas on the examination system being discussed in the country do not seem to have any advantage over the existing one.
Mr. K. Vijayakumar, you are grossly mistaken. You have misunderstood the fundamental purpose of an educational system in a progressive, democratic society such as India. Education is indeed a learning process, but the recipients of the learning are individual students each of whom has different talents, interests and aptitudes. There is no possibility of an education czar overseeing a centrally-run national education system in the interests of the society as a whole, "the collective good" as you call it, because it is impossible for any one individual or organization to undertake such a task, and because "the national good" is something that ought not be decided by politicians and bureaucrats. You espouse a spirit of collectivism in education that is simply not in tune with the individualism and liberal values espoused by a majority of Indians. All the great educationalists and philosophers of education of the past, such as Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, and John Dewey, stressed the importance of an education system which catered to the individual needs of students, of different ages, abilities, genders, castes and creeds.
I disagree to a significant extent with the aforesaid argument that paints a grim portrait of our school education system. If the education system is in such dire straits, then how is it churning out students and professionals who have epitomized brilliance and intelligence at national and international fronts. One could analyze number of Indian students engaged in cutting edge research and thereafter leading giant corporates at both silicon valley and wall street. The issue is not to seek broader reform but to provide this opportunity of quality education, as provided in private schools, to as many students as possible. Just based on the current level of young population and it's projected growth rate for coming decades, even if we're able to provide quality education to a good percentage of them, the country would have enough intellectual capital to act as a growth catalyst for that time.
I share the same feelings as Juzer Ali. I still experience a big void in my learning, even after spending 24 years of my life in the so-called formal education. Schools such as those run by Krishnamurti Foundation and ISHA Foundation strive to provide opportunities for value-based and all-round learning in an enjoyable way that kids love to learn more. A humble suggestion and a request to our policymakers is to seriously consider ways to bring such wonderful opportunities to the mainstream, which is currently accessible only to a minority. It would also be great to see similar changes in our institutions of Higher Learning. With India becoming the largest-cum-youngest country in the world, demographically, such fundamental reforms to our education/learning systems would be the most important factor in determining if this demographic change would become an asset or end-up in the liability side of our country's balance sheet.
The article reflect the state of affairs in the education arena today. No doubt that in the examination oriented system of education marks speaks more than any thing else. But the author has failed to bring out suitable remedies that ails our education system. Examinations bring fear and cause stress in the minds of the students. But the way out to de-stress needs to be implemented with immediate effect since many students have committed suicides for scoring low marks in the examinations. Education is the manifestation of perfection in man. But today's education system is diametrically opposite. So this should be complemented with practical oriented pattern.
The issue is raised at the right time when the HRD ministry is looking eager to strengthen our education system. Author's suggestion to give more autonomy to the teachers is welcome but this cannot be realized without quality teachers as evident in the higher education system where the situation is very bad. The only solution that seems is to improve our examination standard. Examinations should test students' understanding of the subject and just their ability to memorise the subjects.
An important goal of education is to produce informed and responsible citizens, who will become active participants in the democratic process. This cannot be achieved by the mere imparting of factual information and practical skills. What is important is the cultivation of the ability to analyse, the desire to question and the courage to challenge convention. What good is a horde of highly-trained software engineers or managers, for example, who are incapable of providing creative solutions to the problems that the nation is facing, be it communalism, poverty or corruption? Is our educational establishment willing and ready to create citizens capable of responding to these challenges?
The Indian education system, which has got lot of praise in the western world, has got many such flaws, as pointed out by Professor Krishna Kumar. It undermines the student's ablity and potential if he/she has not scored well in the board exams. But in order to change that, we need a change in atitude of parents, teachers and education boards. For doing that, we need to publish articles on such topics more frquently. In every newspaper, we should publish such thought-provoking articles at least once a week. There should be debates in schools and other public venues about this topic. Only by social awareness and collective interest in this perspecive, can we bring a change in this atitiude. I request professor Krishna Kumar, and other such 'progressive intellectuals' to be more active in this regard and write more of such articles.
Students should have had ample opportunities to assess their strengths and interests during their twelve years in school. I believe that the curricula, teaching approaches as well as evaluation systems ought to be designed with this 'end use' in mind. Personally, I found the Common Admission Test (comprising the test, group discussion and interview) for the Indian Institutes of Management profoundly useful in my two years at IIM as well as in my professional career. If similar approaches, with due modifications, are espoused in primary school level, we can eliminate instances of 'ritual whipping' and other such atrocities.
My son recently attended a 'free school', where children, within limits, would decide their course of study, and method of work. Children were also responsible for conflict resolution as well as other aspects of the school's functioning, including framing the rules of this democratic school. I found the children (the oldest of whom were in grade 6) to be responsible, capable of knowing what they needed to learn, and taking the initiative to do so, with adult guidance. Since the school was not adult-and exam-driven, students were good at learning from their own mistakes, problem solving, and doing independent projects and research. They were the free to explore, discover and excel (or not) at the subjects or activities of their choice. By contrast most schools lean towards mediocrity through the exam and evaluation system. Even while we ponder the economic rationale behind getting every child to be certified as "competent" at everything on a uniform scale (when instead they could excel at some things and truly contribute towards a vibrant economy and culture that is not ruled by corporations), we need to ask ourselves why, as a culture we are addicted to exams, competitions and contests. Are we insecure because we have never really used our skills in real-life situations? Do corporate/government employers need a large pool of uniformly trained automatons? Are they being allowed too much economic space? Are we so colonized that we can't take initiative to do real work? Are we (the educated), competent to run a democracy? Obviously, the examination boards have a lot of re-thinking, re-working and explaining to do, but so do we as a culture. That does not let the boards of the hook. They need to prove themselves worthy before they evaluate children.
The malady of the current education system has been beautifully articulated by Prof. Krishna Kumar. The goal of education is lost and teaching towards clearing exams has become the only norm. I don't agree with Mr. Himanshu Almadi who seems to be suggesting that brilliant and intelligent students are an outcome of the current educational system. Of course there are students who perform brilliantly, but it hardly seems like they are because of the system. They are what they are despite the system. The focus of any system, especially at primary education stage, should be to benefit a large population of its entrants and not merely some. One more obsession that the current educational system faces is the burden of information in the curriculum. If emphasis is given on understanding and creativity rather than memorizing information, much of the bloat from the curriculum can be simply removed.
Have we really to play with the aspirations of young minds? Are not students getting what they want with our present system of examinations. If the real intent is to filter out corrupt valuations and the like, then the solution is somewhere else.
I am the grandparent of six grand children in different states studying in reputed institutions in USA and I am a silent observer of the curriculum of the schools, methods of teaching in the classes and performance of the children in their schools and college. In addition to the core subjects like English, math,history and geography, science,physics, chemistry and sports ,the students are expected to take optionals like one or two of the different languages like French, Spanish,and German, debates, art and theatre. These optional subjects help to assess the innate abilities of the children. These students are able to speak boldly in a public forum without fear and they develop an inquiring skill. I see that in every student here. Hence I am of the opinion that the development of a good student to a great extent rests on the schools and the type of education and opportunities given to the students. Kapil Sibal's approach in this direction is laudable and every school and university in India should implement the reforms for the betterment of the children in India and to develop them for global opportunities. The Indian education system should not lay stress on performance in the examinations. The parents also should come out of the narrow expectations of making their wards an engineer or a doctor but allow the children to develop their innate skills. They should cooperate with the schools to implement the reforms for the betterment of the children.