Exam Fever



’I have never let my school interfere with my education – Mark Twain’


The inexplicable stress and the performance anxiety; the need for doing endless rote of the incomprehensible subjects; the unnatural and inhuman comparison of who in your classroom is better at History and who at doing Math. The impalpable anguish of studying unknown subjects from the books awkwardly edited and poorly printed whose contents were politically motivated.

That used to be the horror of studying for the board exams. The parents didn’t really knew why they were doing it and their kids who shouldn’t care but were put to extreme amount of stress, anxiety, and hardwork at such a tender age. The reform measure introduced by the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal will make the board exams optional and the common entrance tests would determine eligibility for college admissions. Though this doesn’t explain how the danger of common admission tests becoming like board exams would be prevented, the very psychological pressure of ‘Passing 10th’ would be eliminated and that should bring a lot of comfort to the children. Parents though, used to the competitive nature of schools, may oppose this move and may even be concerned about how the future of their children would be determined. But that is only temporary and, to a little extent, even irrelevant because improving the children’s welfare alone is the concern behind this move.

Above all this, there is a very big problem that the HRD ministry must address: The plight of the school curriculum in the state education sector. The curriculum in the state board is designed without applying any of the internationally known instructional methodologies, written carelessly by the ill-equipped people, and equally poorly edited. The ghost of corruption haunts even the education sector, which makes for poor quality of paper and inferior printing practices. So the resultant text book is unreadable, unattractive, dull, and boring.

Much worse, the content of these books are often tweaked to suit the mood and preferences of the current ruling politicians. The history, literature, and political ideologies of the textbooks change dramatically based on what they believe. As we know about these politicians, we are grimly aware that often their ideologies are illiterate, unscientific, and ridiculous. This must change. The central government must make serious initiatives to redesign the entire national curriculum. School education is far more important than defence and currency. Allowing the state governments to manage the state education is like making state-level defence ministries and separate currencies. We all know that would lead to chaos and disaster.

Allowing our children to study the lessons dictated by people like Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha and Mayavati is a lethal poison that is being constantly fed to our society. Scrapping the board exams is just an interim medicine to treat the symptoms. The real antidote is still overdue.