BENGALURU: Amidst the global pandemic, one bit of news did not get as much attention as it deserved. The New Education Policy brought in by the government almost got buried under the volcanic eruption of our daily news.The new policy is an ambitious project of the government to overhaul the way education is imparted and accessed across the country. It focuses on changing the current system, which revolves around cramming as much information as humanly possible a few months before the examinations. It also focuses on vocational training, and students will now have greater freedom in choosing the subjects that they pursue. It also aims to reduce the focus around the dreaded ‘Board Exam’.
On the surface, it is great news. One of the unspoken dark secrets of our nation is that we don’t speak about the large number of student suicides caused by the pressure of competitive examinations. For years, the dreaded Board Exams have caused rifts, fears and tears among Indian students. Cable TV connections in millions of homes are snapped off a few months before the exams. Everyday life becomes dark and sombre. Hence, reducing the importance of Board Exams is definitely a step in the right direction.
However, the sceptic in me is unconvinced. The Right to Education Act 2009 was also an ambitious policy. I worked as a teacher a few years after it was implemented across the nation. While the Act had imposed rules against beating up students at school, not much hadchanged at the ground level. At the school, life for the students was akin to a video game – where you had just one life, and had to navigate among teachers carrying sticks, rulers and dusters.
Even though the New Education Policy is progressive in its approach, the final implementation at the ground level will have to be done by teachers. And till a decade ago, the phrase ‘Spare the rod, save the child’ was actually written on blackboards as ‘Thought for the day’.I was curious about the phrase and decided to look it up. It turns out the phrase traces its origins to a 17th century poem. The poet compares the tribulations of love to the behaviour of a naughty child. Teachers, of course, took the bit about the rod quite literally. The teachers of my school modified the statement one step further – ‘Find a rod, hit the child’.
Our PT Sir considered discipline to be a sport, on par with football and hockey. We were hit with rulers (wooden, plastic and metal), sticks, barks of trees, belts, badminton rackets, and exam pads. If our teachers turned out to be kind, parents encouraged them to occasionally test out their wrestling skills (and vice versa).
There is also an entire industry built around Board Exams – coaching institutes, guide books, question banks and educational apps. Even the mobile technology revolution of recent years could not reduce the stress of Board Exams. Every year, rankers are heralded and garlanded and paraded, inadvertently creating pressure for all the others.
It is easy for adults to pontificate on social media about how marks don’t matter. But the truth is, it will take decades for us to shake off our primal fear of Board Exams. And the first step arguably needs to come from the teachers. Our scriptures say Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara. But it fails to mention that in a few cases, it is a case of Guru WWF Smackdown Superstar!