This story is protected under Google product Licence.
Our school children are said to be faring very poorly when it comes to skills in reading, writing, mathematics and science. Globally, we now stand 62nd on this measure, well behind even Jordan and Armenia. Still, we believe India is intellectually rising.We are living in a state of fallacy that India is intellectually rising on the basis of the fact that our school grades are getting better every year. And with surfacing of RTE(Right To Education, Act) the situation is shifting from bad to worst.
Students thus promoted cannot even write three- digit numbers, leave alone adding or subtracting them.
Five years after the implementation of the RTE Act 2009, the fact that only an average of 48 per cent of Class V children in India can read a Class II level text, as per a survey conducted recently, is a worrying sign of the abject failure of the Indian education policy.
In India parents are crazy for English-medium schools and there is a deep root feeling which places them on a higher pedestal. As English is not their mother tongue, much of their energy is wasted in understanding the subject and then mugging up answers and rewriting at home what their teachers wrote on the blackboard or dictated to them.
There can be no two options about the need to recognize the loose vault of our education system. Those pointing out its root cause to be lying in higher education system perhaps ignore that the need of correction needs to be sowed in the primary and secondary- level education. This does not happen in the existing system.
Some schools may boast of the assignment projects given to students. In a majority of cases, the projects are done by parents, neighbours or tutors because the children simply have no energy to do them. When they reach Standard X, they are advised by their teachers not to write even a single word from outside the textbook in the Board examination, lest a paper examiner fails to understand and gives them poor marks. This phenomeon continues with senior secondary, and by then students become robot. And sure a robot fails as any machine does. But in real life there is no retake.
Thousands of meritorious students denied admission in Delhi University every year. The admission cut off list released by the Delhi University for the last couple of years has surprised every one including the student and parents community too. They surprised and ask Is it justifiable on part of the DU to increase the cut off to 100%?
These high cut off rates released by the Delhi University and some others are not at all justified. Cut off lists cannot portray the intellectual ability of a candidate. Intellectual ability can be tested only through IQ's and interviews. A 100 percent cut off is pointless as they would only get brilliant students and in the long run, it will push away more prospective students.
Fixing for such high percentages for cut offs is illogical and it only adds to the academic pressure. There is already too much pressure on the students to perform well in the internal and external exams.
Today’s teachers are lazy and students are more lazy. They make them dependent on search engines. Teachers allow them to copy paste from internet. They allow such unethical practices under their nose. Experts in the field of education are of the opinion that bad teachers and lazy students coupled with unethical grade inflation in school and college results is the primary cause for the abysmal and failing standards of education in India. More and more students are getting higher and higher marks, but the standard of education is going in the opposite direction. Over the years, our students are getting better and better grades on paper, but this has in no way helped to push up our knowledge levels.
Amit Sinha is a bilingual columnist. He can be contacted at facebook.amit
