Misguided Education
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: March 13, 2014 -

The universal objective of education is to guide people in the right direction.

But here in the State, education itself has become ‘misguided’.

The recent leakage of CBSE’s Class-XII Physics question paper and subsequent sale of the leaked question paper for Rs. 3000 to 5000 in the State is a disgrace for all.

The ‘black-marketing’ in education is indeed the fallout of such misguided system.

Instead of encouraging the students to gain much wider knowledge and develop reasoning and analytical abilities, they are simply tuned to face examinations and score high marks.

No doubt examination is essential for students.

However, excessive pressure on them about examinations and marks is not at all right.

The teachers and parents only want their students to score high marks in examinations. There is nothing wrong in it.

The present education system has compelled the students to focus only on examinations.

Grade or percentage is the only thing that matters to a student.

It seems that a student’s worth is determined by just few questions asked in the examination, while other aspects of the student have been totally ignored.

Such is the system that complicates the misguided education in the State.

Most interestingly, the State Government’s new recruitment norm for teachers and other employees of Education Department, which is based on the marks secured by the candidates right from the matriculation examination, has ‘inspired’ many students to score high marks by hook or crook.

Some students are always on the lookout for ‘safe’ examination centres. The present education system is really pathetic.

One of the factors for unemployment among the educated people may be such defective system of education.

Some report said that almost 90 percent of fresh graduates in India lack the employability skills. The situation is even grimmer in the State.

In every locality, there may be hundreds of master degree holders and even PhDs, but most of them may simply remain idle dreaming of getting Government jobs some day or the other.

The State has been focusing only on the quantity and not on the quality of education.

However, the defective system of education in the State can be rectified at least to some extent through the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE).

It has been introduced by Central Board of Secondary Education for students of sixth to tenth grades.

The main aim of CCE is to evaluate every aspect of the child during their presence at the school.

This is believed to help reduce the pressure on the child during/before examinations as the student will have to sit for multiple tests throughout the year, of which no test or the syllabus covered will be repeated at the end of the year, whatsoever.

The CCE method is claimed to bring enormous changes from the traditional chalk and talk method of teaching, provided it is implemented accurately.

As a part of this new system, student's marks will be replaced by grades which will be evaluated through a series of curricular and extra-curricular evaluations along with academics.

The aim is to reduce the workload on students and to improve the overall skill and ability of the student by means of evaluation of other activities.

Grades are awarded to students based on work experience skills, dexterity, innovation, steadiness, teamwork, public speaking, behavior, etc. to evaluate and present an overall measure of the student's ability.

This helps the students who are not good in academics to show their talent in other fields such as arts, humanities, sports, music, athletics, etc.

Moreover, job-oriented courses should be introduced in colleges of the State to address the problem of mass unemployment among the educated youths.

A constructive change can be expected in the State only through a proper system of education which will bring overall development of the people and enhance human resources.