The courts have certainly done justice to the students of our State.Provided equal education to all - the rich,the poor, the urban,the rural student.
Only its implementation is mind boggling..I'm referring to ENGLISH in particular,the most dreaded dragon of the village student who has no access at all to the spoken word.
Students of the previous syllabus could just spill out all they knew because both the questions and their answers were predictable.The new syllabus rightly focuses on spoken English and its practical applications.Only it was supposed to come in stages : step by step, class by class. Due to different prevailing situations,it landed on us all of a sudden.
And that's where the average village student suddenly finds himself treading on ropes less taken.To him even the asking of basic 'wh' questions- what, where,why
or pronouns - I, you, he,she.Or actions like go, come,sit,stand
or boy,girl is either a stimulus to fear and shame or a cause for that embarrassed smile,
'How do you expect me to answer that?'
And then the exams - even if he's among those who can read the question,he has no idea of what it's about.If it's a question of choice, he uses his version of Inky,Pinky Ponky. -Any other question he answers by whatever method strikes him at the time.-
either copying bits of other questions from the question paper or funnier still -
making a fine jumble of all the letters he can think of.Those who have a vague memory of what was taught in class tend to get confused between the words dialogue, letter writing, summarising etc in which case we have different types of inter-mixing.
Correcting such answers for the public exams makes us wonder what his problem might be-cutting class,or had his teacher been irregular or careless or was his primary education faulty?Is he from a broken family? Is he the bread winner of his family? His fault or his teacher's fault or his parents's fault?
Correcting papers for the re-exam is heart rending.When hundreds of children have no idea of what they are answering and why.What will their futures be, we wonder.Most children from the villages (I mean most backward areas) may give up after a few attempts at re-exam.And join their parents as labourers - as were their parents before them and theirs before them...with the same attitude of ignorance and submission to others as their parents were before them and theirs before them ....
For girls there is the additional fear of landing up with a drunken husband - as her mother was before her and her mother before her.
In case a student manages to clear the English exam, most probably he would have cleared the other subjects too.He or she gets a chance to opt for training as a skilled labourer. Where they can then afford to forget all about English - for the rest of their lives.
And with it, a gateway to freedom !
And with it, a gateway to freedom !
Sometimes I wonder how it would be if we gave them a choice of opting for their vocational skills in the tenth standard itself with a minimum of say reading and writing skills in English.This would prevent unnecessary 'drop-outs' and let them pursue their goals in peace.
Perhaps keeping all this in mind, the authorities have opted to bring the CCE {continuous and comprehensive evaluation} system of evaluation into force from the next year onward (Although it's a nuisance to the teachers when students misuse their freedom of not having to learn by rote by dodging to open) their books itself.
its true......
ReplyDeleteThank you v.much. Your comments help me think,search and write better.
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