Testing children without teaching is a criminal act

Updated on: Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Innumerable studies have shown that our elementary school system is ruptured, that our kids cannot divide or subtract; they can’t apply what they learn in their science texts to everyday life. Whether students are not studying or teachers not teaching, whether the government is not spending enough on education or whether curriculum is not updated regularly, the defences are many. But it’s time to come up with solutions, said experts. VC of the National University of Education Planning and Administration (NUEPA) N Govinda said, “India needs to invest enough to develop good teachers. The key lies in the hands of the teachers.” “Testing children knowing we haven’t taught them is a criminal act.”

Most academicians had objected to participating in PISA, or feel that annual exams to check quality is damaging. Anita Rampal, professor of elementary and social education at the department of education at the Delhi University, said, “A lot of these reports are very alarmist that damage our education system which is still stabilising and iniquitous. Look at quality from the equality perspective.”

Finland, which topped the recent PISA assessment, put in over a decade to strengthen the public schooling system at home and ensure that there was one uniform curriculum for all and teaching in schools was uniform. “To create competition at the early years of education is unhealthy. Somewhere the system gets torn,” added Rampal. Africa which had joined PISA recently backed out; after performing miserably for years, it realised it had several basic issues to deal with before competing with the OECD league.

The just out report by NGO Pratham only validates what PISA said. Students cannot read, forget reading coherently, they cannot do basic math required for life. In a way, the schooling system is shortchanging its stakeholder. As Farida Lambay, one of the founders at Pratham, said, “Our children go to school with a certain dream, their parents have some aspiration. When we don’t teach them well, we are cheating them.” She felt that the government first needs to realise that the quality aspect has to be addressed, following which doable goals need to be set up.

An architect of the Right to Education bill, Vinod Raina, said the country did not need a revolution for better schools. “Set the curriculum renewal process rolling and get good people to teach, by paying them well, and the progress will show in five years,” was his prescription.

Testing children without teaching is a criminal act

More Education news