Skip to main content

English worship of mediocrity



One of the infinite paradoxes that haunt CBSE is its attitude to the assessment of English. A student in Kerala was awarded 100 marks in all subjects except English in the last class 12 examination. There may be other such students too but my information is confined to this case for now. My first question is why the student was deprived of one mark in English? [The other questions will follow soon.]

I have been an examiner of CBSE for two decades now. I have never succeeded in comprehending the Board’s claim to “objectivity” in assessment.  The Board gives an astoundingly protracted set of instructions to the examiner before the evaluation process every year in order to ensure “objectivity”. But don’t you dare to follow those instructions! If you do, you become an outdated gargoyle stuck up on a post-truth façade. Why? [That’s the next question.]

Why? Those instructions are only meant to help you to award marks liberally. Almost any answer can be accepted as right if you look at those instructions. Be liberal. Be generous. This is the sum of all those instructions. Then why do we need all these instructions? That’s the next question.

We need these instructions in order to cut down that one mark from the student who threatens to jettison the sacred convention of not awarding 100 percent to English. You can always find a clause or sub-clause with which you can slash half a mark here and another half there so that the perfect 100 loses its crown. Why does the Board do that?

Honestly, I have never figured out. The only answer given by CBSE’s ‘experts’ is that language can never be so 100 % perfect. “Language is also about style, Mr Matheikal,” one expert told me once. Of course, it is. I nod my head. So what? Which style is perfect? How do you judge that?

The truth is that the Board has no genuine answer to that as well as many other problems related to assessment. 100 percent in mathematics or physics doesn’t actually mean that the student has perfect mastery of those subjects. When it comes to English, however, perfection matters! Strange?

It is strange. But I have never been an advocate of excessive magnanimity in valuation of answer sheets. I detest the entire process which is a worship of mediocrity. Just this morning a senior secondary teacher of CBSE answered me with this message on WhatsApp to a related question: [My response is also there.]


All the twenty plus years that I have been an examiner, I have grappled with this enigma: why is every system [I was an examiner with other systems too before joining CBSE] tilted in favour of the mediocre? Why does the world belong to the mediocre so blatantly? The answer, we all know. Another teacher in the above-mentioned WhatsApp group reiterated it:


That’s it. Clear enough.

Now the question why English cannot be awarded 100 still remains a mystery. I hope some genius of CBSE or any other Board will condescend to enlighten me on this.

Next question is what the above WhatsApp comment implies without subtlety. Why is the English assessment system of CBSE is perpetrating this terrible injustice against the brilliant students? When it awards 98% to a mediocre student and cuts down the 99 of the brilliant one to 98 because 99 is meant only for the rarest of the rare [that’s what really happens at the evaluation centres, believe me], it is being shamelessly discriminatory against brilliance. This is one thing that I have never understood all these years that I have been an examiner.

Let me end this apparent diatribe on a personal note. During the evaluation process a few months back, I awarded 99 marks to a candidate whose answers revealed outstanding understanding of the literature lessons and a mature grasp of the social reality in the writing section. I decided to ignore the few minor grammatical errors; they were insignificant anyway in comparison with the content. But my Supervisors cut down one mark because of those grammatical errors. Yet another brilliant student merged into answer sheets that carried endless grammatical and spelling errors and, worse, seriously inferior content but scored 98!

Inferiority of the content is what really bugs me. Serious thinkers are always sidelined in this world that worships mediocrity. Why? That’s my last question. I know the answer. The above WhatsApp comment gives the answer. We all know it too. I’d like to put it this way, however: We’re scared of intellectual brilliance.  

Comments

  1. Pradeep NairJuly 15, 2020 at 11:19 AM

    The problem is not just with English, it's with all Arts or creative subjects, where we don't have a quantified matrix to follow. In mathematics and science, it's easier.

    Excellence or lack of it in creative domains is always a matter of opinion. There can always be a few reasons why something is good and a few other reasons why the same thing is not up to the mark.

    Tough call. The problem can be solved to some extent if we have a quantified matrix for evaluation. Start with 100% for every student. Deduct a fixed score for mistakes like in spelling, grammar, syntax etc. There will be no doubt why a student lost some marks.

    That eliminates subjective interpretations of a piece of writing. And it's possible for someone to score 100%.

    But if one has to evaluate aspects like solidity of an idea, its flow along the passage, clarity and crispness of composition, etc., it's difficult to have a template for evaluation; and opinions are bound to vary depending on who is making the judgement.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 15, 2020 at 12:33 PM

      I understand the arts and humanities subjects facing the same problem. After all, how objective can these subjects be? If we make the assessment of a subject like literature objective, the whole essence of the subject will be lost.

      But is excellence really just a matter of opinion? I'm not sure. Aren't there a lot of things whose excellence will be commonly accepted and agreed upon?

      Another issue is about deducting marks for mistakes. Tough to put into practice. In effect,it won't be different from what we are doing now.

      I feel that our obsession with scores as the only way to determine a student's merits should be eradicated. Let there be exams. But there should be something more that explores a student's love for the subject, creativity with it, dexterity with it, and so on.

      Delete
  2. DashyJuly 15, 2020 at 7:30 PM

    I’m glad to see that teachers are talking about this. I had shrugged this matter off with the fact that these marks are no indicators of a student’s skill. In fact, when the subject papers of math/science are tougher than usual, their marking is also made lenient isn’t it? In my year the math paper was that way, and I remember being elated for having done well in spite of the tough paper. But the ones who hadn’t done so well had the same marks as mine.
    Anyway, like you mentioned, it is best to not obsess over the scores alone to determine a student’s merits. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 16, 2020 at 7:42 AM

      I can very well understand your feeling about being placed at par with another student who never did well in the subject that you loved much and happily performed well in spite of the exam being tough. Obviously the assessment system fails when that happens. This tilt in favour of the average becomes a painful tilt against the gifted. It's unfair. It's unfair especially because the average always find a way of getting ahead in life by hook or by crook while the gifted often don't know those tactics. I have been a teacher for decades and have watched the brilliant ones struggling to move on in spite of their brilliance because the world is governed by the mediocre. This is painful especially when you are a victim of the system yourself.

      Delete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरJuly 17, 2020 at 10:16 AM

    What's elaborated by you applies to the evaluation of the answer-sheets of the theoretical subjects also. The last line of this post is quite apt. This is the harsh reality of India (at least). Brilliance and genius are scared of and therefore, kept at bay.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 17, 2020 at 12:57 PM

      Many countries have already changed traditional approaches to assessment. There are so many other ways that can check a student's aptitude and skills. Projects, for example. But we in India will find ways of subverting that too.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more