How do you normally see your child? I mean, objectively, with the usual parental measure, do you at times wonder if your child is growing well and learning enough? In the midst of hectic schedules, I think, most parents do pause and wonder about these small entities they are responsible for. There are two ways of looking at any child: firstly, through a report card based on periodic evaluation and secondly, through keen daily observation when your child may suddenly reveal a new ability or unfold an unexpected talent, an unsuspected depth of intellect or emotional insight. The latter may be infrequent moments of life, but they reveal the holistic personality of the child more than any test based on a circumscribed syllabus, set to an arbitrary timing and evaluated according to a unidimensional scale of marks or grades.
That is why I am disturbed to see the growing trend of testing children on their knowledge and skills based on pen-and-paper tests. This trend of testing has been forced out of proportion by certain organisations, too well known to require naming. For them, this is a business initiative offering lavish prizes to the highest scorers at different levels, thus roping in a gamut of parents and in their wake, educational institutions as well. Today, extraneous testing has burgeoned into a lucrative mega industry even as most education boards are trying to balance one dimensional testing with a more comprehensive and all-round evaluation of every child. Geography and life skills, Science and physical fitness are now gaining equal importance in a child’s scholastic evaluation. This deeper knowledge of children has evolved from the findings of expert research across time and space, thereby opening clearer vistas in education.
This comprehensive and constructivist philosophy of education, however, is a threat to the mega-bucks testing industry with its score sheets and analytical graphs. The industry is striking back via media headlines, having roped in prominent magazines and newspapers that print sweeping indictments of schools over large sectors, on the basis of unauthorized reports like SLIMS, PISA, QES, etc. published by NGOs and private corporates that ‘measure education’ as imparted in schools and subsequently label the schools inadequate, thereby directly bringing their scales to bear on the students in these schools.
The label of inadequacy inflicted wholesale on schools, whether government, private, rural, urban or elite, is as unreliable as the set pattern seen in one prominent educational magazine of rating elite schools according to some nebulous criteria. The reason why an informed citizen looks askance on such labels of praise and blame is their ulterior yet obviousmarketing motive. Given the suspect state of media integrity, what could be the validity or authenticity of any media publications of school ratings?
Moreover, a direct nexus grows between the academic inadequacies exposed in schools in studies conducted by NGOs and corporate bodies and the branded educational gadgets and/or services (including testing) being marketed by these same NGOs and corporates to compensate for the identical academic inadequacies. Is it not suspicious when an epidemic is diagnosed with the cure readymade in market? It is, however, not merely the money-making motive underlying the very purpose behind such studies that is disturbing. What isappalling is our society’s readiness to measure children on a single scale and allow them to be labelled as lacking in every way, be it in academic knowledge, skills or social values. Why label students, for instance, as lacking sensitivity to gender and class issues when they are merely mirroring how these traits riddle our society as a whole?
Again, while these same NGOs and corporates peddle edu-cum-tech goods and services tagged along with enlightened pedagogical philosophies like Gardner’s MI Theory, in the same breath, they label students on the basis of pen-and-paper tests that conflict entirely with such philosophies. Gardner proposed the valorising of allskills and abilities as valuable human resourcesfor the future. A prominent mathematician was recently quoted by a media publication, criticising modern schools for not producing any Ramanujans. Which schooling system can claim Ramanujam or Einstein or Edison as its product?
Testing students and schools are an indirect indictment of teachers. The media often quotes prominent education personalities who advise quality control of teachers by subjecting them to periodical tests. Apropos, which system of pen-paper testing could make a teacher creative, caring and committed? Could a test certificate ensure these three vital Cs?
Continual testing and quizzing is not the way to improve education. The process may contribute much to the educationindustrybut does not really educate unless it can take into account individual differences in learners and not measure these on a single scale. We need to acknowledge what has been achieved by the learner as well as measure what remains to be done. Perhaps, the main duty of schools is to balance the impersonal rigour of a competitive environment where only the fittest are naturally selected for survival, by adding the humanizing factor of lessons in cooperative learning.
Dr. Sanjukta Sivakumar
Principal