Innovations in Education

We seem to have come a long way reforming the Macaulay’s education system. Examinations are now conducted to test what the students logically know rather than what they remember and reproduce from the text book. They have now a choice of multiple answers to a question to choose the one he/she thinks correct.

Now the next inevitable reform has happened.  In  Maharashtra  HSC Board Exam held  yesterday,   in the poetry section of the English paper, one of the questions, A4,  had the answer printed while the other two,  A3 and A5,   had no question but  only the remark “Accept any reasonable correct answer”!  Is this a sort of reverse engineering adapted in  school education to test a student’s ability to construct a meaningful question to fit a chosen answer!! When perplexed students raised this, some teachers told them to simply write a few lines of the poetry that was printed so that the question   remained attempted. The authorities have accepted that is was due to a printing error and students who have attempted  the particular question will be awarded marks. Here the NOTA choice in our elections will not do.

In UP, Board exams have been boycotted by some 6.5 lakh of students. The reason is the government’s strict action to keep the education mafia in check using a network of CCTV cameras to maintain a close watch on examination centres, superintendents and room invigilators. The students understanding of their stakeholdership in examinations appears weird..

One of my  students in an  MBA examination  chose to occupy the chair close to the wall  in the far end leaving many chairs in the front. When I asked him to come and occupy a chair in the front, he said with a wry smile that he would sit as per the advice of his “vastu” consultant!  Another student was not happy with his low marks and expressed dismay, notwithstanding his access to question paper leaked the previous evening .  He suspected foul play in paper correction!