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Cheating shops
Promoting failure
Campus Notes |
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Cheating shops
Across Himachal Pradesh, students may not learn the basics of education, but they will surely master the tricks of holding agitations, sitting on fasts and marching through the streets. Though the tradition is not new, it has assumed an alarming note in the past few years. A trend has set in the state where private educational institutes, especially the ones that offer degrees in technical courses, begin with substandard infrastructure and courses that are not recognised, and yet manage to attract admission seekers in plenty. With over 9 lakh unemployed youth in the state and limited job opportunities, average students with average percentage of marks take admission in private institutes without ever verifying the credibility of any of these. The institutes make tall claims about their respective record in providing students with quality education. The myth is broken only after a student has already spent a sizeable amount of time in the institute. By the time he realises that the course is not recognised and the institute is not equipped to run it. It’s too late. Soon, the institute calls him to say that it expects all students to fight for getting recognition for the course and the institute. Solan has witnessed several student agitations in the past few years. In the latest case, the students of Shoolini Institute of Life Sciences and Business Management (SLIB) realised after spending a year in the class that the institute ran only a distance-education course in the garb of a regular one. The harried students faced another blow when the Faizabad-based Acharya Narender Dev University decided to withdraw affiliation for various courses. Left with little option, the students initiated an agitation. The students, who were hitherto serious students, suddenly found that they now have to play agitating students. The fretting, fuming groups of students marched through the towns, shouting slogans, holding fasts. They coaxed the authorities of Himachal Pradesh University to grant recognition to their course. The agitation that lasted more than three weeks left the students and their parents a disappointed lot. A section of students opined: “It was not easy to march through the streets, shouting slogans, sitting on fasts, making repeated visits to newspaper offices and meeting officials of the district administration. It sapped all our energy, confidence and support as days turned into weeks.” The parents had a much harder time, as they too had to make several visits to senior officials in Shimla. “As November approached, we lost all hope,” said a few parents. At stake were two academic years of their children. The thousands or rupees spent as fee failed to make a difference. Students of an art-and-craft institute, too, had to face this situation when they realised that the course had little validity in the state. After an agitation, senior politicians promised them the necessary respite, but their efforts came to naught when the institute officials vanished, leaving the students in a quandary. The students were robbed of not only an academic year, but also the hard earned money of their parents. Even though it seems clear that the state government slept when these teaching shops were mushrooming, officials lay the onus on students. They say that since these institutes have little to do with the state government, they have no control over their working. Still, shouldn’t the government wake up now? Can it not make registration and verification of institutes mandatory? Isn’t it the responsibility of the government to punish thugs and cheats? As long as money does the trick and the government is lax, innocent students will continue to march, not towards success, but in protest. |
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Promoting failure I
was at the State Institute of Education for addressing a group of government teachers on “Problems in Mathematics Among Primary Class Children”. My question to them was: “Why do children fail in mathematics?” It was then that the teachers told me that they didn’t. It is common knowledge that children in government primary schools are indiscriminately promoted from first to fifth standard. The teachers then told me about the repercussions of this type of promotion. These repercussions also must be common knowledge, but these needed to be penned down for those involved in the framing education policy. What happens when a child is promoted without ever deserving this treatment? By following this practice, the child and the parents have bright chances of losing their motivation, because there is nothing to work for. The fallout of the loss of motivation among children would be that the teacher would have no further interest in teaching. When the promoted students enter the fifth standard, the teacher meets a group of unprepared and untested children, who may not be ready for classes even lower than fifth. They have never faced an examination. Suddenly, in the fifth class, they have an examination and a tough one at that. I was told that it was not that the children were not tested during the year, but even if they failed or obtained zero in the test, they were promoted. Hence the examination is a farce and not for real. When they face an examination in the fifth class, they who are not fit to be in fifth, fail. They repeat the academic year, once or twice, fail again and then drop out. In some schools, these failed students are put back in the first standard. Why promote them in the first place? There are schools where they do have an entrance test for the fifth class, which these “likely to fail” students” don’t clear. They then drop out, achieving nothing. Some of these failed students get an affidavit from the “market”, saying they are about the age of a first-standard student. They then take admission in the first standard. Aren’t we encouraging them to cheat? A teacher does not have a say in what is to be taught in class. He or she has to transact the curriculum and now her right to evaluate is also challenged. We may have started with good intentions, but now that we do have feedback from the key agent of education, the teacher, we should re-examine this policy. Do we control expenditure on conducting examinations and stop earning frustration of teachers or do we let the number of dropouts swell? |
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Campus Notes Refresher course:
GND Varsity, Amritsar
MNC picks up six:
— Contributed by Sunit Dhawan and Pawan Kumar |
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