No Exams!

I owe my apologies. I have not been keeping myself updated, or maybe I just forgot the import of this news.

So it turns out that the government of Bengal has decided that there are not going to be any exams till Class 8 in government run schools. No, let me correct myself. Exams are going to be there, but it does not matter whether you pass or fail. The marks are only for your own assesment, and will be used to work on your improvement. You'll pass all the way till Class 9. Then who knows...

Whats this grand idea about?

As per education minister Bratya Basu:

"Children are gradually becoming afraid of exams. In order to free them from this trauma, we are thinking of making exams till Class 8 as optional," Basu said, talking to reporters here.

"I am not against the examination system, I just propose to make it optional. This way we can lessen the burden on children who feel the pressure. How can you effectively assess a student if he or she is traumatised," said Basu.

Emphasising on the need for students to speak English, the minister said: "I have discussed with educationists, teachers and others. They all feel that for students to do well both at the state and the national level they must know how to speak in English. So, we are thinking of introducing a 50-mark test of spoken English from Class 1."

Uh-huh. Gotcha.

This all sounds very nice and noble. Little children. Playing in the sun. Lovely carefree childhood. School is where you go to learn. No pressure. Have fun. Learn new things. Work all the way up. Then, when you are mentally ready to face it, you'll have exams. Super. Utopia descends on earth.

This would have been very nice especially for people from relatively poor areas or rural backgrounds. Many children from not well-to-do backgrounds drop out of school when they fail, and rather take up some handicraft or work to earn money. This sounds like a great option. If you are not going to fail, then might as well sit through all of it. At least as far as possible.

But wait. Didn't you make one little assumption?

You are essentially saying that children are going to study even when there are no exams and learn in full earnest. Ok. Why?

"I am not against the examination system, I just propose to make it optional."

-- oh cool, show me a kid who'll appear for an optinal exam.

"How can you effectively assess a student if he or she is traumatised?"

-- how can you asses a student without exams? Or, if you have 'optional' exams or exams 'just for the sake of assesment' why do you think that would be a true assesment when there is no specific motivation to study?

"This way we can lessen the burden on children who feel the pressure."

-- sorry for a reality update. There is pressure. Pressure to excel and perform and make a living out in the world where almost nobody is willing to give you a second chance. All the more so in a country like India with a huge population and not-so-many job opportunities. And you have just destroyed the competitive ability of children. Face it, its tough. Thats how its meant to be. Education is meant to harden your mind against the realities of the world and equip you with the skills you need to survive. Not just in terms of words and numbers, but also in terms of mental attitude.

"They all feel that for students to do well both at the state and the national level they must know how to speak in English. So, we are thinking of introducing a 50-mark test of spoken English from Class 1."

-- and this brillinat congregation of people parallely decided that it is not really important to know arithmetic in order to succeed?

The point is, the only reason (at least I feel) exams were kept from an early age was to make children study. Nothing else. You cannot explain to a kid why education is important for them. They are way too young to understand that. The only motivation they have to study is so that they can pass the exams and stick around with their friends and not feel bad about being left behind. In the process, they actually read and learn.

If there is no risk of failing a class, then why bother? Why listen to what is being taught? Why make an effort to remember anything? Why go to school at all? Wont it be much better just to sit and goof around and play?

We are therefore running the heavy risk of undermining the very need of education at an early age. By putting this false mask of re-assurance, we are crippling children all the way upto grade 8 when its too late already. Then come grade 9, no wonder scores of them will fail or drop out, because nobody remembers anything, or read anything seriously.

Yes, I am not in favor of seeing little children fail. I know how terrible it feels to your self-confidence, respect and ego when you watch all your friends go ahead of you and you are left behind so heartlessly. Its not good in any way. But surely THIS is not the solution.

What could we do then? We could invest in better education. We could get better teachers, and not let the school service commission be a farce. We could reprint books and try to present the content in a more interesting manner. We could make effort to make learning fun, enjoyable. So that at the end of the year, exams seem like a natural process rather than something to be feared and nighmared about.

But no! Who wants to do all that? It takes so much time, effort and money! Just go for a shortcut instead!

Talking of the shortcut, here's another interesting observation. Who goes to government schools anyway? Not the upper middle class or the rich. Only the poor and a part of the lower middle class for whom probably private schools are way too expensive would do that. And people in villages probably, where there are no provate schools anyway.

So what this measure just did is that it placed the lower rung of the population in a permanent disadvantage. You just made sure that the poor remain poor, essentially uneducated and in servitude. At the same time, you tickled their ego a bit, making them feel good about having gone "through school", and won some public acclaim and a good number of votes. Bravo. Maybe these people actually have more brains than sometimes I suspect.

But if we did see through it, its time to react. Enough.

Awesome Jumping Power

Sometimes I wonder how wonderful it would be to have the eye-view jump superpower. What is that? Its really cool. Say you are standing somewhere, and you cast your eyes as far as you can reasonably see. Then you say the magic words, and voila! You are there!

Simply awesome. Not to mention that you can keep repeating this, hopping across the countryside like no car possibly could. Heck, if you could land yourself on hills, you might go quite as fast as an aeroplane!

Of course one needs to worry about where you are going to land. For example, there are no guarantees to your safety if you landed right in front of a speeding car. It would wham you, and blow the living superpowers out of you. So for all practical pursposes, its probably a good idea to land somewhere you can clearly see to be safe.

Then there is the public issue. You would not like to attract attention, perhaps, to your little unusual-ness. So do it when its a bit empty, or maybe in a really thick crowd too, but where everybody is just way too busy to notice you. But then again, you have to remember the issue of landing somewhere clear and safe. You would not suddenly want to end up on somebody's shoulders, worse still somebody of the opposite sex. The consequences could be really disturbing.

Given these restrictions, its still a really cool thing to have. You would never have to worry about commuting across states for your job - it would be a matter of an hour, at best. You would not need to worry about being stranded at sea, even better, where you can see for miles and miles and in all probability is a pretty safe and clear place to land on, provided you can swim between hops. Thieves and robbers would be practically shit scared of you, when they would point a gun at you and you would simply vanish.

And best of all, when you are happy, you could do a hopping dance of a lifetime!!

Then again, sometimes I also wonder whether I am going mad...

India Against Corruption (?)

Sitting here now in USA, it is amazing to watch the nation being swayed by the India Against Corruption movement. Annaji, and his allies, have successfully caught the attention of an entire nation, and have brought people from all walks of life, in almost every part of the country, to a common sentiment.

At the outset, the effort is to be praised. The issue is genuine, this I think we all agree over minimal debate. Almost every one of us have faces the below-the-table dealings of government (and sometimes non-government) civil servants. It is common knowledge - corruption is India's second currency, and politics is essentially a slang. It is heartening to see that there are people who believe that a change is possible. More importantly, it is heartening to see that those people are not alone, that Indians from almost all cultural, religious, economic and occupational backgrounds of all ages have raised their hands in support.

While the intentions are undoubtedly noble, history is witness that even the best of intentions have a bad habit of going awry. Let us take a moment, and for once try to understand why is it that the movement has amassed such a fan following. Of course there are people who know the cause through and through, but which I mean that they have done their homework, read through the actual Government Lokpal Bill and Annaji's version and know what is what. But lets be honest here. Do all the people who are walking the streets today, voicing their vociferous support, really know what the are supporting? If we have a show of hands for who all know precisely what the bill means, how many would come clean?

I am not hinting at some underhandedness in the design of the Jan Lokpal Bill itself. While my understanding of it, like perhaps thousands of other Indians, is only rather basic, with some coverage of who all is under it purview, what can be questioned and investigated and how it differs from the Governement version in some basic ways, for the sake of argument I am willing to trust the people who were behind its fabrication, as well as the judgement of my well-informed brethren who made efforts to put up suggestions and modifications on the websites over months. I am willing to trust them because by the way it was created, it seems that they do not represent the compartmental interests of a particular section of the populace, but has come to be a ground for the agglomeration of opinions, grievances and suggestions across a wide range of people who have long suffered under the said cause.

Neither would I venture to say that Annaji and his group are taking undue advantage of the "right to protest" which itself seems to be much in question now. Arvind Kejriwal has openly discussed the point that there can be no compromise when it comes to curbing corruption, and while the our-way-or-no-way attitude may have been intransigent on another occassion, the fact that the group is not alone in this erases the suggestion that they are trying to blackmail the Government to bend their way. If people all over the nation are trying to bend the government into accepting something, I would personally label it as representation of the opinion of the masses than blackmail. No, my concern resides elsewhere.

Why are the hundreds and thousands of people who actually do not clearly understand what they are vouching for willing to fight and protest? One must realize that this is a powerful emotional moment to many of us, the "common men", the "middle class". Forever have we been taught that "India is a great nation", that we must love our country, that we must live up to the efforts of the greats who brough freedom to our nation, and so on and so forth. Forever have we seen our freedom and rights being taken away from us, in some pretext or the other. Forever have we silently grieved and grudged those who were supposed to be out first point of defense upon desperation - the Government - and only been cheated further in return. Forever have we tried, in vain, to love our contry and be proud of Her. Today, perhaps for the first time after independece, the "common man" has an opportunity. An opportunity to shout out against those who refused him justice and his true rights. An opportunity to feel important and involved in a possible change, hopefully for the better. An opportunity to hope that all that we learned and grew up believing, only to realize that it was an empty dream, can yet be realized. Add to that the shameful and frustratingly blank-headed tactics of the government in dealing with the situation, what with banning protests, imprisoning the leaders of the movement, and people who had any rational doubts about the bill are now all the more convinced about who the villain and the hero is. The power of this psychology is perhaps what is driving thousands of those people who really know nothing about the bill per se. They are waving the banners because like their grandfathers and grandmothers 64 years before them, they feel a frenzy. A frenzy that there is hope for a better tomorrow, and not necessarily becasue they understand the pros of a legislasture inside out. A frenzy that, though well intended, is often not based on sound, concrete and well-reviewed logic.

This is where the concern lies. 64 years before today, I daresay there was a day when Gandhiji aroused the whole nation on probably a much larger scale that what we are seeing today. They too braved the sticks and bullets in the hope of a better day. And when the day came, they danced, they sang, they joyously claimed victory, and went home, thinking all was done. Little did people realize that the deed was not in overturning something that was existing, but in finding a truly rewarding alternative. And so it happened. Power passed from the British to the Indian politicians. The change that people fought and died for remained in the books and papers and the constituion and lectures at the law college. Walk into a village at some remote end of the country, and honestly, they would not know if they were still under the British Raj. For the people who gave their blood, nothing much really changed.

Why did the best of intentions of millions of people go wrong? Because we the people, who attempted to implement the prized changes, were ourselves flawed. We were blinded by the power, position, money and advantage that it offered open in front of us. And so one by one, the political landmass of India slid into debauchery, resulting in a day that we have today, when we are essentially needing to raise a hue and cry for a "second freedom movement".

Do we have a guarantee today that the same is not going to be repeated? I fear and doubt despite all hopes, because the Jan Lokpal Bill today gives the same offer of unprecedented power that some musthave seen one day 64 years ago. Supposing that today we win, and the Bill goes through, most of us will return to our own lives, thinking happily that good times are ahead. In the meanwhile, will those who come to weild the new One Ring of Power not fall prey to the same debauchaery that engulfed generations before them? Are we sure we are not risking the initiation of another landslide of corruption in the years to come? And I fear the most, because the people who are today marching in parades and shouting sloans and weilding banners are the same people who turn a blind eye, day in and day out, to child marriage, female foeticide and suppression of rights of tribal minorities. They are the same people who throw garbage on the streets, besmirch sites of Natinal Heritage, ask for dowry in marriages and go on riotous rampages after Godhra. When we are ourselves so very imperfect, will the utopian expectations of "perfect" laws sit well with us? If tomorrow the same laws for which we fought bite back against us, even if for completely genuine reasons, will we bow our head and learn, or will we go on another nation-wide rampage until our egos and personal needs are satisfied and every voice of unwanted protest silenced?

If we are imperfect, the system that we shall get will be imperfect too. If we want things to really change, then alongside fighting for the BIG issues with flamboyant demonstrations, peharps we should also look into ourselves and mould ourselves from within to try and reach a greater level of perfection.