Saturday, July 9, 2011

Who wants us to be illiterate? - 3

Grading system was introduced to reduce unhealthy competition in the name of marks. But people are so smart that they started the trend of highlighting all A+ or all A!

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Why did it happen? Our country is not a very rich country that everybody who wants to have education is not gifted with a chance to have as he/she (especially girls in my opinion) pleases. One hindrance is financial one and the other is social one. Or atleast education has been made the most expensive "product" in the market! What market? The market for status. It is not a new thing that certain courses are considered to bring more status than the others. For example, professional courses (all professional course students forgive me). When I decided to go to BSc after plus two, many people asked me; "are you going for BSc"? You know what? BSc is considered as a very low level course! I even had a classmate who did BSc for one year and left to do some medical related course only because somebody asked her "Are you doing BSc?"

It is sort of rule of thumb that all those who have scored distinction in plus two science (since I'm a science student, its easy for me to talk about it), must go for either Engineering or Medicine! I knew a girl who scored distinction in 10th, wanted to learn commerce, but her family refused her to do that! What is this? One of my teachers had told us once in class that a student's interest or career is determined in UP school itself. So if a student wants to do commerce or humanities even when he/she has scored distinction, why can't you just let the person learn whatever he/she wants?I'll talk about the entrance exams later.

I'm very sorry to say that the attitude of parents regarding the education of their students is not a healthy one. They may be people who have never learned any Engineering or Medicine in their lives, but want to force their children learn what they don't want to. My own mother wanted me to become a doctor, which I never approved of, I didn't like learning too much physiology or chemistry, I liked Physics and Maths, so why on Earth would I go to do something in which I had no interest at all. Thanks to my own strong decisions, I never had to be sad like "Oh My God, why I chose this" or to have struggle mentally to cope up with something which I didn't like.

But the thing which I was talking  is a different one, though not entirely. So children should be given the freedom to choose the course they want to study. So if somebody with whole heart wants to be an Engineer (like Rancho in Three Idiots (I recommend that film to all of you), he/she must be given the chance to become an Engineer. Its not fair to refuse a person's opportunity just because that person doesn't belong to a particular socio-economic-regional-lingual-caste-country-gender class. Because education is everybody's birth right. Rights should be sold and one should be aware that they belong to one. The "neo-urban-stylish-I don't care for the other one society-patronising-f-s and all other sorts of words"  of India will not agree with this statement, because they are privilaged people who have always had their rights. But dear people, India is mostly rural, even now, and as Gandhiji said (I don't know whether you know who he is, or whether you believe in his principle) India will develop when the villages will develop. (One more point to be added about this particular kind of urban people (not all urban people); you are definitely stylish, can speak English (big deal)  and talk eloquently about self reliance and all (not that you don't need that) but do you know anything about endosulfan? (One of my "urban" friend trashed an article which I gave him about such issues as endosulfan.) If you don't know, I can't help. Probably you may not even want to know. Sorry to say this again. I've 268 friends on facebook. Nobody reshared a post about endosulfan from me. Nobody cares unless they become unprivilaged. That's not a good trend.)

 So if a child in an underdeveloped rural area scores 80% or 75% after studying in a school with no proper facility or cracks an entrance exam without any coaching mania, then that 75% shines more than the 100% of an over privilaged urban child. Not that 100% has value, but when this 75% waala/waali who is really brilliant wants to come out and study his/her opportunity is being refused just because of the score.


To be continued............................................

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