PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS IN INDIA

Family members and friends climb the wall of Vidya Niketan school in Mahnar village, 60kms from Patna, to pass on answer chits to the students appearing for SSC exams on March 18, 2015. THE HINDU

I'm very late to comment on this happening which is very common across India albeit at different levels. Leaving the question of morality in wilderness I think upon the reasons  forcing people to do such acts. The functioning of school system in India is visible in the photo. Why do these happen? When did this start? Who are responsible for the mess? What is the solution? 

Simply Exams are feared in India. Education is not for 'man making' but for 'money making'.  Learning is for earning and nothing else. The system had a commonality as long as the British ruled us. Though various committees established during the British era  suggested education through the mother tongue, still millions in India  complete their entire schooling in a foreign language. 

The Sir Charles Wood, the then secretary of State enunciated the aim of education as the diffusion of the Arts, Science, Philosophy and Literature of Europe. It laid down that the study of Indian languages was to be encouraged and that the English language should be taught wherever there was 

demand for it, and that both English and the Indian Languages were to be regarded the media for the diffusion of European knowledge.

The Despatch was considered to be the " Magna Carta of Education of in India". It was the first authoritative declaration on the part of the British Parliament about the educational policy to be followed in India.

Lord Macaulay rejected the claims of Arabic and Sanskrit as against English, because he considered that English was better than either of them.

Till date, the educational institutions are manufacturing machines that can recollect and reproduce the things learnt.  A nation which has got 1/7th of the world population has got not a single institution of higher learning among the top 500.

Leaving the occasional achievers who are fired by individual inspirations and serving elsewhere, the system remains cramped. From root to the shoot the system requires revamp. But none would do as politics is there in the soil, air and water of India. Politicians would not allow any real change to happen. 

They decide a curriculum which suits them and not the students. The leaders decide the percentage of candidates to be promoted and not the examiners. In some states they proudly declare that millions of candidates scored 100 % in some subjects and they claim credit for the same. Nowhere in the world   it is seen that politicians claiming credit at the success of a candidate in an  examination which  they never wrote.

From curriculum to teacher recruitment,from prescribing text books to purchase of note books, from class room interaction to  question paper setting every body interferes  in the school system. Setting up a private educational institution is the most lucrative business today. Alongside they become educationists and  industrialists.  They become a big fleet owners too. as they possess 10 - 300 buses or vans in which they transport their consumers every day to their educational factories.

"The Delhi High Court on Thursday upheld the 10-year jail term for former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala and four others, including his son Ajay Chautala, for their role in the teachers’ recruitment scam which, the judge observed, showed the convicts’ “flagrant disregard” towards society and system." March 6 2015: Indian Express

Childhood is the best part of any human's life. But the cut throat competition and the unbridled zeal to excel in every field forces parents to goad their kids into various classes which may bring them instant fame and money. There are kids who travel 20-30 kilometers in the evenings to pursue the hobby of  their parents. For instance 'Skating'.  Rock climbing may be an option for a child in a hilly region. But the kids who have no access to hills or institutes that train them in their vicinity are forced to go farther places to help them climb up in their lives.  I'm coming across parents who complain that their kids missed just a single mark in Biology, though he/she has scored a perfect hundred in the remaining major subjects. 

The need of the hour is not students who can score marks, but students who can leave a mark in History.  As long as Politics rules our classrooms, no ethics can be expected from the learners.