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VIEWPOINT: RIGHT ANGLE
Education
Minus Tests
Examination
reforms must not be accompanied by zero teaching.
By Swapan Dasgupta
 When
a minister of the stature of Murli Manohar Joshi makes a policy statement
on a subject as important as school examinations, it should ordinarily
prompt widespread interest. It is a commentary on the state of public
discourse in India that the human resources development minister's Rajya
Sabha statement on March 2 proposing the abolition of public examinations
in Class X was greeted with silence, bordering on indifference. Maybe
the sheer difficulty of associating the scheme with a saffron conspiracy
precluded a shrill outcry from the usual quarters. But more likely, the
evaluation system is thought to be such a technical issue that conventional
wisdom deems it best left to ''experts''.
It's a faith that isn't warranted by experience.
For the past five decades, Indian politicians have played havoc with schooling
by repeatedly imposing their own pet schemes on students. If the 1950s
and 1960s were devoted to politically inspired tinkering with the medium
of instruction and removing traces of the so-called colonial hangover,
Indira Gandhi's infatuation with socialism precipitated changes in the
curriculum and examination system that made life hell for schoolchildren.
In the guise of equity and social engineering, radical pedagogists patronised
by S. Nurul Hasan crafted a system whose devastating effects have now
been formally acknowledged. According to the National Curriculum Framework
for School Education, prepared by the NCERT in November last year, ''Memorisation
of facts is given precedence over abilities and skills involving higher
mental operations such as problem-solving, creative thinking, etc."
It is to Joshi's credit that he has now proposed
an alternative scheme whereby, apart from a more manageable curricula,
students will write a public examination only once, at the end of Class
XII. Unfortunately, good intentions have a way of being hijacked by the
so-called ''experts'' who use children as guinea pigs to test their fashionably
outrageous theories. The National Curriculum Framework, for example, while
seeking to blend relevance with equity, excellence and international standards,
cannot extricate itself from the ''progressive'' methods that have been
so utterly discredited in the West. The document mindlessly parrots the
belief that the child must manage his own learning, a discredited approach
that has contributed to classroom indiscipline and falling standards.
The ''learner-centred approach'' seems to be
a case of lurching from one progressive theory to another. If the present
system is centred on the spurious equity of mass production, the new system,
with its emphasis on ''joyful self-learning and self-directed learning
experiences'', could end up invalidating the entire purpose of education.
After all, education is not about a child merely imbibing his own immediate
social experiences but successfully transcending it. It is, as the philosopher
Michael Oakeshott put it succinctly, a conversation between the generations.
A voyage of self-discovery leads to the perpetuation of existing social
hierarchies.
Paradoxically, Joshi recognises this. The stress
he has placed on the teaching of Sanskrit and cultural values indicate
his own preference for traditional instruction. But he is poised against
an academic establishment that wants to substitute a vibrant learning
process with the pitfalls of classroom anarchy. If this is the assumption
behind the proposed examination reforms, it will be a case of stupidity
being replaced by chaos.
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