I read an article
written by U. Subramaniam, who’s a lecturer in Mumbai’s Mithibai College. She
believes, and I agree with her whole heartedly, that in the process of making
everyone equal, we’ve made everyone mediocre. No one wants tough exams,
everyone wants ‘good’ marks to happen easily, no one wants to slog, and yet,
everyone craves for great salaries. If a student in a university commits
suicide, the newspapers (as if those reporters are experts in education) feel
that the papers are too tough. What’s wrong in having tough papers? There are
universities the world over that expect you to cope, fail if you can’t, put in
more effort if you’re weak, and drop out if you can’t make the grade at all.
They maintain their standards and their media don’t feel that the lowest of the
low must be ‘respected’ and ‘adjusted to’. Nobody demands laxity. I loved one
sentence that she wrote: “ So much of our students are capable of doing so much
better. But they fail to deliver. Why?...because we molly coddle them, we fail
to challenge them. We demand little, so they give less.”
Recently at a class
get-together, we found that all our mates were doing really well, wherever they
were. The credit, we unanimously agreed, must go to our teachers who were
stern, strict, even resorted to the occasional caning and punishment, without
fear of some parent running to a television channel. Duffers were called
duffers, not labeled ‘slow learners’, and were expected to put in extra effort.
When a duffer did well, it was appreciated, and when a bright one ‘behaved like
a fool’, he was told just that. The talk was straight, the atmosphere
transparent.The entire class wasn’t expected to wait for a few to catch up.
It’s like this, if you want to do well in
athletics, you will compete against the swiftest runners, not against clumsy
slow-coaches. So also, if you want to better yourself in art or maths, you’d
want to get exposed to the best in that field, not to the corner budhoo. Why,
then, in schools and colleges today, aren’t we promoting excellence in
children? Why aren’t we raising their standards instead? Where are the teachers
who believe in this philosophy? In the long run, we are dumbing down our best
institutions. Once upon a time, to have studied in Goa was a big thing, for the
schools were good, the standard of languages high. Today, I’m not so sure.
About fifteen or twenty years ago, I knew two women who opted to do their Ph.
D. in French from Goa University because they valued the quality of their
guides. One of them was from Rajasthan, the other from Madhya Pradesh. It
wasn’t easy for them, but they took the trouble because they wanted quality
stuff and were willing to pay the price (in effort and time, not just money).
Can we still boast of such things?
The philosophy that
says ‘let each person take her/his own sweet time for learning things’ isn’t
the best. Some stress is required in every life to balance it out. You can’t
tell an athlete, ok, take your time to win the race. In a competitive world,
stress will happen. You can’t tell a surgeon or a nurse ‘koi baat nahin’ when a
mistake is made, else it might be repeated, or someone else might repeat it,
and someone’s life will be at stake. You can’t tell a pilot it’s ok if you
don’t make the grade for he will perish along with several others if he doesn’t
do his job error free. And much of that attitude, that sense of ‘let me do
better’ must begin at school level. Everything, from covering books to writing the
date to getting the sums right must be insisted upon.
I remember, in my
childhood, people, including those from within my family ridiculing ‘convent’
education because they gave so much importance to trivia like wearing the
correct footwear and covering books and maintaining indexes in notebooks. But
know what? Many of the bright students from the vernacular schools had to learn
these same tiny things in the corporate world, if they were to rise. That
included something not so trivial: the English language. With the Hinglishizing
of English, we are destroying the one advantage we had in the world today. The
further we get from the real, grammatically correct English, the better are the
chances of the Chinese overtaking us. If I were a young parent contemplating my
child’s future, I would take care to choose a strict, disciplined school over
any other.
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