By Priyanka Saurabh
I am very surprised for the last ten days, I am watching a blind race, what were the results of class X and XII declared, I do not understand that more than 95 percent marks of every child, are big photos and then congratulations Shower, a new competition started, is it possible that in the examinations of the board, I have doubted the entire education system and questioning the system that why our education system is real knowledge Is running for a poster instead of testing that.
Meanwhile, the words of a post that went viral on social media, I think are completely true. A girl of 499 is upset that her number 1 was reduced because she used to give her time on social media. He is said to not be completely antisocial. I sympathize with him. Her relatives should immediately give her chocolate and turn her head and say, “Son everything will be all right”. The biggest question today is whether to remove the merit list from school exams.
Nearly every state board, along with the CBSE and ICSE boards, declared class 10 and class 12 results this year due to the extraordinary circumstances created by the coronavirus epidemic. This step is seen as progressive and retrograde by some, therefore, it becomes necessary to assess whether the merit list should be removed from school examinations.
The board under which the children studying should get 499 marks out of 500, the board member should think. Every member of the paper setter committee should meditate deeply on the paper in which 100 out of 100 marks are given to children. Should these marks be considered a sign of children’s talent? In my view, they raise questions about the entire education system. And at the same time, the teachers who check the copy will also have to think whether they are doing their work properly? After all, how are most students able to score so much?
But the blame is not for these innocent people, the blame is for the short-sighted teachers, the rhetorical assessment system. Rattu, who came out of this assessment system, will be immersed overnight in the street of the Coaching Lift and the merit list will make the students realize the imaginary what the achievement means and their external recognition. This promotes unhealthy competition among students. I find this list, which ranks students based on their exam scores, meaningless. As we get older, we realize how meaningless this merit list is, what can be the marks of examination for social status too? We would think. But never overall success can be determined by how many marks a student has scored.
Such lists have put unnecessary pressure on students over the years and hastened the rat race in our flawed education system. The stigma associated with low marks, undue importance given to merit lists is a symptom of how good grades of examinations affect students in India, and how students with low scores are seen to be associated with stigma here. Due to this, thousands of students across the country commit suicide during exam results.
Schools and our other educational institutions have to keep in mind that in today’s industrial and competitive era, employers look for talent, not toppers. The recruitment criteria of employers look for someone who has talent, determination, ability to work with others, the right set of skills, and a hard-worker. These skills are unfortunately not in the students of our education system. Instead of memorizing chapters of history or chemistry formulas and paying more attention to marks, students should make more and more effort to acquire skills and knowledge.
Today in this rat race process, the school curriculum deprives students of important cognitive life skills. Just after the results were announced this month, many people on social media platforms shared their old board exam marks to underline the fact that marks are not the be-all and end-all in life. IAS officer Nitin Sangwan wrote on Twitter that he barely managed to take his chemistry exams in class 12, but that did not bother him. However, some academics and rank holders emphasized the importance of merit list:
Once on the merit list, students do not take board exams seriously. Thinking of making a place in the merit list creates a sense of competition among the students. After gaining rank in the merit list, the token of appreciation received gives them a short period of satisfaction. Although the merit list encourages students to do better, we need to adopt a progressive approach. To overcome the shortcomings of the merit-based system, innovative ideas should be applied in the courses for better education outcomes.
Working together in project teams and guided by trained teachers, learning skills to manage student groups, manage emotions, and resolve conflicts are more important than marks. The evaluation should extend beyond simple test scores to have a detailed, consistent profile of student strengths and weaknesses. Teachers, parents, and individual students should find a way to closely monitor academic progress and focus on areas that need improvement.
Therefore scraping the merit list is a progressive approach as it reduces the unnecessary burden of doing well from the minds of students. But at the same time, some other methods should be prepared so that the overall and all-round development of every student can be done. When Apple’s cofounder says that ‘there is no creativity in the students of India’, we must give someday and take responsibility to fix it where our education system looks weak so that the future of the country can be safe in the right hands. And only when education is right.
(Priyanka Saurabh is independent journalist, columnist, research scholar in political science and poetess. She can be reached at priyankasaurabh9416@gmail.com)
