A few days back India woke up to a
photo of an experience many have heard about or have gone through –
cheating in exams. The photograph was of rampant cheating occurring
during the board exams conducted by the Bihar Government. This
unfortunately is not a new phenomenon in India. The same event was
captured a decade back, nothing has changed. But cheating is not only
rampant amongst the youth, news channels broadcast cheating that
occurred during a promotion exam for junior judges. Is the education
and evaluation system in India promoting cheating and cheaters?
Rote is the method of learning that
has been most prevalent in India. This is not surprising, given that
it was memory that was key to handing down various prayers and texts
through generations in ancient India. Memory was seen as a virtue
which also stood for a particular class of people. This could be a
reason why memorising is such an important part in teaching and
learning in India.
Today,
the use of rote is also an outcome of the schooling system that sees
reduced number of teachers and higher number of students. In 2010,
the then Minister for Human Resources Development stated that there
was a shortfall of 12 lakh teachers while 5.23 lakh posts were
vacant. In rural India, 11% of primary schools have a single teacher.
In such a situation rote is indeed the only way for a teacher to
impart some form of knowledge. A student blindly vocalising what the
teacher says may just be parroting the sounds he hears but the
student is being kept occupied for those hours. Thus it comes as no
surprise that, one of the main findings of the 2014 Annual Status of
Education Report is that approximately half of the Standard V
children surveyed could not read at Standard II level. The report
claims that “Close
to half of all children will finish eight years of schooling but
still not have learned basic skills in arithmetic.”
So, there is every reason for students
to cheat when they are tested.
Besides indicating a breakdown of the
education system cheating can also be seen as a symptom of a society
lacking moral fibre. But how can one grow this moral fibre when not
only the education but many in society are complicit in creating
cheaters? Teachers, instead of teaching in class conduct tuitions,
parents prepare their children's class assignments. It would be
pointless to teach students citizenship in an atmosphere that
disrespects it.
But this is not just the case in
India, there are instances of cheating in the US and UK too. These
however have more to do with schools getting accreditation and
therefore funding. Chinese students have also resorted to
malpractices to crack exams.
Finland must be
doing something right. Their education system has constantly been
rated high. The main objective of the Finnish education policy is to
offer all citizens equal opportunities to receive education.
Therefore the focus is on learning and not on testing, thus teachers
and schools are not forced to get students to perform in tests. This
is not to say that students are not assessed constantly, but this is
upto the teacher. Students come face to face with exams when they are
16 years old when they answer a mandatory standardised test. Most
importantly the teachers are highly qualified, they are selected
from the top 10% of their graduating class and have state sponsored
master's degrees. The education system is publicly funded in Finland.
A teachers job is highly sort after, it has been reported that in
2010, there were 6,600
applicants for 660 primary school training jobs. In Finland, High
school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102% more than what
other graduates make. It could be said that Finnish society give
their teachers the same status as that of lawyers and doctors.
In
India, teaching as a career option is not the first choice and many
institutes offering a Bachelors in Education are of low quality.
This is the reason why many States in India have sought exemption
from the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) which is an essential
criterion for teacher recruitment and was started in 2011. This is a
classic case of which came first – the chicken or the egg, on the
one hand there are low quality teachers because of teaching is not
rewarding monetarily and then the government is reluctant to give
permanent posts to the teachers.
Any
education system needs to be built on foresight, in terms of what the
child needs, what the child will do for the nation and finally what
the nation needs. However in India, a judicious use of hindsight
would be more appropriate before looking into how the education
system can create the citizens of tomorrow.
Samir Nazareth is the author of
1400 Bananas, 76 Towns & 1 Million People'
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