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How often we tell and are told that every child is unique and that each has her own set of skills and should be allowed to explore their interests. The cliched story that teaching fish to fly and birds to swim is counterproductive is all too familiar as are the stories about famous inventors, entrepreneurs and CEOs not being straight A students. Yet come the month of May, the time for the ‘board results’ to be announced we become our myopic selves. Schools that claim to promote holistic development and bring out the full potential of their students on their websites shamelessly publicize the percentages their students have scored. It is funny how all schools have state toppers! Class averages, batch aggregates, even minimum and maximum marks are put on their social media pages along with the pictures of the students. The low scorers are made to feel guilty overtly or covertly for bringing the percentage of the institution down. It is a festival of raw nerves. The obsession of marks is such that the total percentage down to the second decimal place is quoted. The transition from inquiring about outcomes to quantifying one’s score reflects a profound shift in how we perceive the essence of education. It normalizes the idea that learning can be equated to a numerical value overshadowing the broader scope of knowledge.
In such a scenario, is there a place for students with learning disabilities or those who do not have an aptitude for rote learning? Even though education in India is moving towards more application type of questioning, memorization and rote make a major component of the question paper. Solving past papers and understanding the pattern still works. It is not as if the question paper tests all the different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Doing well in the exam is about quick recall and time management and less about creativity and synthesis.
Therefore, treating board examination marks as a final indicator of a child’s success and career path is infantile. It is in this month that many students lose hope and go into their shell of despair and many even take extreme steps. Can we put an end to this frenzy? Can relatives from whom we never hear just not call up to ask how the result was? Parents need to take the first step and preempt such questions and call them out. The onus of not projecting marks as an indicator of success lies on schools. This entire atmosphere that celebrates a 99.9 and mourns for the loss of 0.1 is cruel and ridiculous. Success is a multi-dimensional entity. A single examination is certainly not a predictor of it. Schools have a responsibility towards every student and hence the intense focus over 99.99% needs to stop. It makes the child who rose from a 50% to a 70% still feel inadequate. Instead, we need to celebrate effort. At least schools need to understand this and stop the brazen display of marks.
When the whole system is just geared towards getting ‘centums’ little can be expected in terms of exploring the subject and going beyond the textbook. Without this shift in perspective and acknowledging that lower marks in a particular subject do not diminish a student’s passion for it, our research endeavour will be stunted and the higher educational institution will fail.
Central to the ethos of embracing numerical diversity is that it will result in a stable and a robust society. We need to understand that excellence transcends conventional measurement and not all paths lead to a 99% or a 100%. Without this shift we risk becoming a society that is mechanically churning out high percentage individuals who are not trained to be independent thinkers.
As the class 10 and 12 results are declared around every May let us remember not to be fixated on the precise numerical percentage and chase them down to the second decimal place. Instead let us celebrate the diverse journeys of our children into the future we don’t fully understand.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint