Schooling for Indian children begin before they reach the age of three, when the child’s only identity is still, just his or her name. Little do they know that the sound of their names that they like to hear orrepeat themselves would so unceremoniously turn to alphanumeric or numeric strings of letters by the time they grew into young adults. The identification of India’s enormous population cannot be restricted to names and addresses only. They are identified by PAN, Aadhar, Epic and so on, which is completely necessary! But it doesn’t just stop at these methods of identification.
The toddlers who so happily go to school, later realize that their most important identity would be their score sheet, which would categorize them as high or low performers, and that their sincerity, self-esteem, confidence were to be guesstimated by that piece of paper, which they derived after a three hour long examination… an extraordinary challenge to gauge the potential of a child in three hours after 365x24x12 hours of hard work.
Thus, score sheets that promises ipseity, is only a reflector of the quantity of knowledge that one possesses and not the quality of their thoughts. There is a possibility for a child who is honest, caring, responsible and thoughtful to remain unrewarded. Such qualities in an individual take long to divulge and cannot be discerned in a ten-minute interview.
A score sheet does not give us a wholesome evaluation of any student as our education exhibits consistency (to a certain extent) only in the syllabus for the methodical subjects like, Mathematics, sciences, social sciences. However, it does not look into standardizing other aspects such as mannerism and etiquettes. As a result, the varied cultural differences, plays an antagonistic role in bridging the gap for adjustment. Pertaining to such discountenance in uniformity, measures such as teaching values, good behaviour, prosocial behaviour should be subsumed in primary education.
However, even the score sheets earned after so much toil is still not a testimony of one’s credentials. The young adults still wait for entrance examination after having secured a decent score. Unsuccessful attempts in the arduous entrance examinations held in the country to get into one’s dream institution leaves the apperception of the young children’s design of their world pulverized.
Grading little children through examination increases competition which not only leads to little learning, but failing which, could result one into becoming diffident and eventually reticent leaving behind a generation of feckless adults.
The increase in the number of dropouts due to failure in examination is evidence that the system of examination needs to be revised. The onus is thus on the educators and policy makers to provide the country with a more versatile evaluation system which could direct the children in the right streams, so that one day we can have a country of young people who channel their energy in the right direction, thereby creating a healthy and efficient system of working in the country.
