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Education standards

19 June 2009

A blushful salute to my little Tshering Dendup’s small-big verse, penned in Class VII in 1988, in Paro:

Rusted spades scratch the soil/ To earn a crumb of bread and oil.

What an irresistible visual image! What felicity! What a bundle of focused suggestions!

In 2008, I stumbled upon rare felicities across the pages of my Reading Club magazines and Class magazines:

Was heaven greater than me / That you left so early for hymns?

(the bereaved Sukmith Lepcha, B.Ed III year, asks her Mom)

This ‘piece’ is a blessed chloroform of the mind. We hope our class magazine will make time stand still…Judge not the thoughts it contains, but the thoughts it suggests…

(from the editorial of the class magazine Yangzo and Pema Wangdi, B. Ed II year, edited)

“ As IT became the Holy Grail every nation was after, it drove a nail to the coffin of traditional reading and writing culture. Naturally, Bhutan too succumbed to the emerging literacy-slump”

” As IT became the Holy Grail every nation was after, it drove a nail to the coffin of traditional reading and writing culture. Naturally, Bhutan too succumbed to the emerging literacy-slump Juxtapose them with a piece of writing by Chencho Tobgay (real name withheld), B. Ed II year, 2008, on the first day of his Teaching Practice:

Early shining in the morning parents reached their children to the school along with their bags and coming back. I would see some children were showing laughter face deeply involved their friends talking…

Along the chronological continuum of 1988 -2008, let me place the writings of Thinley Wangchuk (DHSS, Paro, 2000):

And the day opens with no fences around.

Later in 2005, I came across a passionate reader and writer in Kezang Namgay (Paro College of Education, 2005): – a rarity:

When summer painted the dawn/ Like an awakened child

I always relished the oasis of his writings amid the literacy- aridity of the changing times.

The authority of experience, without the pretensions of formal statistics, tells me that 5% of Tshering Dendup’s student-generation had his literary and language standards; 2% of Thinley Wangchuk’s batch his and 1% of Kezang Namgay’s his and 1% of Sukmith’s and Yangzo’s fellow-graduates theirs. And,… 30% Chencho Tobgay’s generation toddled like him.

If this picture can be taken as a simple finding, sans the trappings of an officially researched one, one can conclude that the STANDARD OF ENGLISH HAS FALLEN in quality and quantity.

Global literacy-slump

Was this plunge a historical inevitability? Partly ‘Yes’. There has been an increasing repugnance to the cloistered study of the scriptures and the classics as life acquired the neck-breaking speed and the utilitarian zest for the immediately useful. Thus, knowledge per se, became a commodity of less immediate utility and people became oblivious of the catharsis and moral edification that soul-touching literatures always provided. As IT became the Holy Grail every nation was after, it drove a nail to the coffin

of traditional reading and writing culture. Naturally, Bhutan too succumbed to the emerging literacy-slump. To be specific, a three-pronged giant has pricked and punctured Bhutan’s education standards.

“We are Cinderella’s sisters, trying very hard –often injuring our feet – to wear Cinderella’s slippers. Such frantic, futile attempts down the years did injure our standards.”

1. Still-you-try craze

After Prof. Phil Race, one is tempted to compare our teachers as struggling drivers and teaching a labouring engine. The overloaded teachers landed up spreading the tentacles of the co-curricular activities and some imported exotic practices into the academic life of the school.

2. Cinderella sisters’ syndrome

Should we, therefore, be averse to new ideas and practices? Not at all. First, the so-called new ideas are mostly the old wine in new bottles. True, there are wonderful new ideas. But, most of us being ‘xenophiles’, blindly espouse alien practices. We are Cinderella’s sisters, trying very hard –often injuring our feet – to wear Cinderella’s slippers. Such frantic, futile attempts down the years did injure our standards.

3. Ignorance of Lam Marpa’s ‘cost effectiveness’

One is often moved by the hardships Thuchhen underwent to be eligible for his initiation by Lam Marpa. In his infinite wisdom, Marpa wanted a cost-effective student named Milarepa. To that goal, he commanded the construction and then destruction by Thuchhen of four types of buildings at a time when such exercises meant huge labour. To Marpa, time was not a factor at all. Until Milarepa was made, the education should go on – the cost of the process mattered little; the quality of the product mattered a lot.

“The foregoing is a blind man’s description of an elephant. Let many more describe the elephant so that we may have a clear picture of the ailing elephant – education.”

This Marpan philosophy of cost effectiveness has escaped us for long. For us, almost all students should pass – rather the teacher should pass them – after a year. How rightly William Glasser (1985) quotes a teacher: There are only two places in our world where time takes precedence over the job to be done: school and prison. Everywhere else, the job to be done is more important than the time to do it. (pp. 124, 125of Schools without Failure)

True, ‘cost effectiveness’ was promulgated with bona fide intentions. But, when, despite all efforts, some students failed, ‘explanations’ were often demanded of the teacher concerned and a threat of a cut from his/her salary.

This made teachers pass all his/her students. The recent Cinderella’s slippers called CA came in handy in this context for lavishing marks. There have been, God forbid! school policies of a minimum 80% CA marks to students – whatever their academic stand. In brief, the un-Marpan cost effectiveness drove many schools and teachers into playing safe.

The foregoing is a blind man’s description of an elephant. Let many more describe the elephant so that we may have a clear picture of the ailing elephant – education. However, the very realization that the standards decline is an awakened orientation. And, the REC’s recent survey in collaboration with a Delhi-group (thank God, at last the jasmine in my courtyard smells good!) is a welcome initiative to revive the elephant. Once revived, it will reveal more Dendups and Kezangs. Even Chencho Tobgays will become above-average. How? The cobbler makes best shoes because he makes nothing.

By K C Jose English Lecturer Samtse College of Education

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Comments

2 Responses to “Education standards”

  1. Panamalai R Guruprasad on April 28th, 2010 7:54 pm

    A very interesting article which I think should be read by teachers, school administrators and others concerned with education. I too think that IT should not be implemented in schools such that it replaces activity based approaches, unless the latter is not advisable or not practically possible in any given classroom context.

    The writer KC Jose reminds me of my good colleauge, friend and neighbour in the teachers’ quarters, when I was a teacher in Mongar Junior High School nearly 30 years back (1978 to 1981). If he is the same gentleman, I would like to communicate with him.

  2. Panamalai R Guruprasad on April 28th, 2010 7:56 pm

    A very interesting article which I think should be read by teachers, school administrators and others concerned with education. I too think that IT should not be implemented in schools such that it replaces activity based approaches, unless the latter is not advisable or not practically possible in any given classroom context.

    The writer KC Jose reminds me of Kottuthundiyil C Jose, my good colleauge, friend and neighbour in the teachers’ quarters, when I was a teacher in Mongar Junior High School nearly 30 years back (1978 to 1981). If he is the same gentleman, I would be glad to communicate with him.

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