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THE present ferment about reservations has inevitably brought into focus the issue with which it is inextricably bound, namely, what constitutes merit. What are the criteria by which merit is measured, and whether or not it has more to do with class background and elitism than anything else. It is interesting that the agitation and the re-statement of different views - some very passionate - have come at roughly the same time that young school-leavers are seeking admittance to colleges across the country. The admission process again, is based on what is commonly accepted as the basis of a student's merit, namely, the marks that he or she got in the examinations conducted by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (ICSE) or the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
The frenzied attempts to get into the colleges perceived to be the best for their chosen courses translate finally into the marks that the student has - the best of four, as youngsters know only too well. Here even decimal points count; a student who has 0.5 per cent less than the `cut-off' marks has no chance whatsoever of getting in. It is as if he has failed. And only because his average in four subjects was 0.5 per cent less than that of some others, even though it is, say, 85 per cent.
So what are we saying? That a student who gets 85 per cent in his school-leaving examination is not good enough? That all his hard work counts for nothing, merely because some others have got 0.5 per cent more on the aggregate than he has? Are we - that is, we as a society, we as people who try to think rationally - then telling our young school students that what matters is not how well you do, or how well you know your subject, but whether some other students get just 0.5 per cent more than they do?
There is, surely, something wrong here. This has nothing to do with the reservation issue, but with what we are doing to our young ones. We seem to be acquiescing in their being traumatised by a system which most of them do not clearly understand. Whatever the ills of that system, they have grown up with it and know what it is. But then, being told they are not good enough for admittance to a particular institution of higher learning, that they have, in a sense, failed, must be a terrible realisation, if there is that realisation. There have been many reports in the media of young ones ending their lives, many clearly choosing death to the intolerable stress of a situation they cannot comprehend. (There are many who end their lives because they have failed, in terms of marks, but one is referring here to those who have done well by all standards and yet choose to die.)
If for no other reason, for this alone, it is essential that a close look be taken at the issue in its entirety, at the way in which we evaluate the intelligence and knowledge that our young have acquired. One is not concerned here about those who do well enough to gain admittance to the colleges they wish to go to, but with those who do well by all standards that are set, but still end up failing to get what they have set out to achieve.
The dilemma is not that of the students alone, as will readily be conceded. It is equally that of the harassed teachers and faculty of the colleges which the young lay siege to after they get their school-leaving results. How are they to work out a system that is fair, how can they ensure that they admit those who have done not just well, but better than others? Clearly the only way is by laying down the dreaded `cut-off' marks, and turn away hundreds of bright students who just have not managed that 0.5 per cent more than the cut-off mark.
While respecting the problem they have to face every year, and seeing some degree of logic in the solution they have devised to bring some order to the process of admittance, one has to admit that the solution is not quite as valid as teachers and principals would like to say it is. It is too facile, and, more dangerously, not really a valid assessment of the worth of those students being taken in and those being turned away.
We are faced, then, with the very basis of this issue; just how do we judge how knowledgeable and intelligent our school-leavers are? Is the problem not really that of the methods adopted to assess and examine our young? Have the ICSE and CBSE authorities - who are, in the main, eminent educators and teachers - not turned away from the issue, and sought refuge in systems that appear convincing in their assessments but are in fact nothing of the kind?
One is not referring here to the kind of questions, or the methods of marking papers and all the rest of the issues that still, rightly, bother many; one is talking of a system that seeks, in a manner so hopelessly wrong as to be positively appalling, to determine the knowledge of a student in terms of decimal points.
This is the problem that no one in either of the examining bodies has, as far as one knows, seriously looked at and thought to replace.
Just how is a child's knowledge of, say, geography, rated to be 61.5 per cent and not 60 per cent? If the answer is that the figure is the total of the marks awarded for individual answers, then which answer could have been so finely graded as to come up with an overall figure that is so ludicrous as a measure of a child's knowledge?
One is aware of the standard reaction to this, that these are not tests of knowledge but of the child's ability to answer specific questions. One is also most painfully aware that the standard reaction is wholly wrong. Or else there is a basic misunderstanding of what our school and university systems are.
Schools, and universities, are surely places where the young are educated, where their knowledge is increased, and not places where they are required mechanically to answer questions. The imparting of knowledge is a little different from a kind of drill, from precision marching in parades. That is a skill in its own right but it is not the same thing as the process of learning, of expanding a child's knowledge. Do any of the worthies in our examining bodies really think that comprehension can be measured in fractions? And if it cannot be, why are they imposing such a system on the young?
There has been talk from time to time of doing away with examinations, but we know that it is just that, talk. Nothing will really be done, and this traumatising and, yes, cruel system will continue. Bright young children will be confronted by the stony decimal points that tell them that no matter how intelligent they are, or how much they have learned, they are adjudged failures in their own eyes. That, really, is the terrible truth; we have taught our young to believe in these systems so completely that it is they who consider themselves failures when they are up against these absurd decimal points and cut-off marks.
One realises that there is no easy or conclusive answer. But it has to be sought, without delay. In Oxford and Cambridge they grade students, and not give them marks - someone gets a Beta plus or an Alpha minus. Other places of learning have other methods. We need to look around us and assess the qualities of our young more humanely. The benefit will, finally, be ours.
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