Indian education

Marks don’t matter?

It is that time of the year. Results of the board exams of children who have given their 10th and 12th exams in the different boards are coming in. Following the announcement of the results is a surfeit of posts on social media that “Marks don’t matter” largely from those who are doing well in life now without top scores to boast of, when they were in school. And there are many who tend to agree with that premise.

Yes, a student’s future and success in life in the end don’t really depend on his or her scores in the school. It depends on a combination of factors, academic brilliance being just one. At the end of the day, your quality of work on the job counts if you are to be counted, which eventually paves the way for an individual’s growth. There, the school or college mark sheet or the CGPA is not going to help. Even as an entrepreneur, one’s ability to handle the day-today challenges and still come up with creative solutions matters more for success than the grades one got in Physics or Econometrics in school or college.

Having said that, is that so straight forward as it sounds? Well, not really. Access to better opportunities come through better educational institutions. The gateway to get into those revered institutions is the mark sheet. In a country where the aspirants are way too more compared to the seats available in good schools, marks come as the saviour for getting an entry. Once you are into a top rung college, the competitive environment plays a huge role in shaping one’s world view, outlook and aspirations.  The collective quality of an institution in turn then helps to attract companies seeking top notch talent.

There is also another gateway other than marks to get into some of the Ivy schools which is, through the bank accounts of parents. Those who are with privileged backgrounds and have enough money in the bank can of course also get admissions into some of the top schools even with average marks. In this discussion, I am not considering such class of people. I am referring to the average middle class and below type of people, while making the case for importance of marks.

While arguing for “Marks don’t matter”, the most popular example often touted is of Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. But Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard without completing his course to start Microsoft with some of his friends. So calling Gates a “school dropout’ is a misnomer. And where does Microsoft corporations recruit its people?  From some of the really top institutions of course all over the world. And who do they recruit? Toppers of course. I have not seen Microsoft having a quota for bottom of the pile students or institutions.

There could be few others in India and outside who might not have been toppers or even passed their grades but have become extremely successful in life. There could be examples from the field of sports, literature and arts. But these are a different variety of people who had those respective skills and accordingly chose those areas to excel. Again, there could be eminent sportsmen who didn’t focus on studies but excelled in their sport of choosing. These are all exceptions and exceptions cannot be the rule.  We are talking of the majority who don’t have “other” special skills to pursue them as passion. A Sachin Tendulkar or a Kamal Haasan who didn’t complete even their schooling but still who came out toppers in their chosen field, cannot be given as examples for talking down the importance of formal education.

There are often examples of successful entrepreneurs and businessmen which are given to drive home the point that even without academic brilliance (read as scores), one can reach a level of success. These are again exceptions and for every such successful person there are thousand other instances of those who have lost their way since they did not do well in their studies.

If marks really don’t matter, why are college admissions based on marks? Why are screening candidates for jobs in campuses happen based on marks? As long as supply exceeds demand by a long distance as the case it is in India, marks will continue to play the role of the numero uno filter.  As I mentioned earlier, good marks ensure access to good institutions and thereby the probability of one’s success becomes higher. Probably once you are in a post graduate level, the actual scores or ranks do not matter. But till that level, your grades continue to be an active filter that separates those who make it and who don’t.

As a parent of a school going child, I am equally frustrated by the rat race over marks that determine the career path of a student. The cut offs in some of the top colleges in India can drive you towards insanity. Couple of years ago, the cut off for the B.A programme in Lady Shriram College, Delhi was 98.75%. Recently, admission for a coaching class in Mumbai starting April 2021 got closed last week in flat 30 minutes as parents rushed to ensure their wards got admission in that coaching class. So, apart from colleges now, even for admission to coaching classes, there is a rat race. And why? Just to ensure children get higher and higher marks that will enable them to secure admissions into some of the better colleges we have.

I agree that it is not fair on the part of the world to put pressure on children that marks are the ultimate. But equally, “Marks don’t matter” is a fallacy propounded by those who choose to ignore the ground reality in India. For the middle class and the aspiring class, the chasm between their dreams and reality can be bridged only if their children study and study well. So for this group, marks do matter.  It may not be end of the world if one doesn’t score enough marks. Just that the struggle gets more intense and the probability of success gets lower.

#Marksdon’tmatter may be cool as a trending hashtag once a year. For rest of the year, M A R K S D O M A T T E R.

Original Image courtesy: The Quint

 

The Passport called English Medium!!!

Hindi Medium for the uninitiated is a Hindi film that hit the screens last week sans the trappings of the typical Bollywood fare but which holds a mirror to the society with a strong social message. Without any of the leading “Star Khans” but with just Irfan Khan as the lead star, I am not sure how far the film will reach eventually. After 3 Idiots if there was one Hindi film which leaves you thinking as you left the cinema hall about your kid’s education this must be it. In the film, the lead couple go to unimaginable lengths just to secure admission in one of the Top English medium schools in the city.  Because in the lines of the mother, “If the child goes to a Govt. school, she can’t learn anything. If anybody talks to her in English, she will not be able to fit in the society. Hence she will be lonely and will get depressed.”  The extremes the couple stretch themselves to secure that admission in a top English medium school like even trying to transform themselves to poor people to take advantage of BPL quota as per RTE act may sound preposterous.  But the message – that “English medium” is a mandatory passport for one’s flight to success in life is not lost on anyone.

Not just this one, but there were other films like Chetan Bhagat’s novel turned film – One Half Girlfriend and Sridevi’s super hit – English Vinglish dwelling on the theme of the need to master English to get recognized/get ahead in life. Ironically this is not some typical Bollywood fantasy but stark reality of India being mirrored in films.  At workplaces today, one’s command over spoken English is considered essential to rise up the corporate elevator whether you like it or not. There are very few careers I can think of today where one can still succeed without mastering the English language. Probably politics (where being oblivious to the English language can become your calling card) or some creative fields could be those. Otherwise even in medical field the reality is, you feel comfortable of a surgeon’s ability if he is able to explain the diagnosis and treatment course of your patient in eloquent English!!! Narayana Murthy of Infosys once controversially observed in the context of IITs that with Indian politicians “rooting against English”, the task of getting good English speaking students at IITs gets more difficult and that affected their quality .  He was being practical and honest. In urban India the caste system based on Manuvaad is gradually on the wane. But in its place there is a new caste system based on “Medium of Instruction” – English medium being forward caste and any other being backward!!!

However this is not the case in many other successful countries. In Germany you don’t need to master English to head an organization. In Japan, though knowledge of English is an asset particularly in an Export driven economy like theirs, lack of flair in English has never been a liability.  Same is the case with China.  It’s another matter that they probably now realise that if they had imbibed the English language they could have ruled the global commerce not just in Mfg. but even in services!

But then India is not a homogenous state with one culture, one lingo like Japan or Germany. We are “United States of India” where our culture, language, food habits,…,.. keep changing every 500 kms. We sort of got stuck in the middle where we couldn’t have Hindi or for that matter any other Indian language as a universal Pan Indian language due to our cultural diversity. At the same time English being a language imported due to the colonial rule couldn’t achieve the universal reach across the board. Result – we have a language divide. If we have to get out of this situation, it’s too late or virtually impossible to go back to a Japan or Germany universal Indian language model.  So it looks like adopting English language universally in India is only the practical option left with us to go forward from here.

“Universally” is the key. It was the very articulate Shashi Tharoor who once said, “Denial of opportunity to learn English to our children would be tantamount to destroying their future” and I agree. It’s unanimously accepted that India’s command over English has been one of the key attributes to our success in Software business worldwide. So why not we build on our strengths and leverage the same? That is certainly not by keeping English a privilege of few and sowing the seeds for another conflict. Instead a way forward could be to make ‘All” schools in India – English medium schools and phase in English as the universal medium of instruction from a particular year in the very near future. This is not to shortchange our own native languages which still needs to be taught in the same schools but need not be the “Medium of instruction”. We could expect politics to play and outrage factories running on full capacities over this move.  But then have we seen wards of politicians who get educated from Non English medium schools?  By the way in our neighbouring Pakistan in 2013, I heard that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province took a call to switch over from Urdu to English medium gradually in a period of four to five years!!! This could be a significant reform in the field of education that would ensure English not just being a passport to economic, social and educational advancement universally but a ‘Visa on Arrival” for growth, the likes of Donald Trump notwithstanding!!

This reform may not be “the” only cure for all the ills in our education system but would be a good place to start.

Postscript: While on this, just after the ascent of Mr. Chandrasekharan as the Tata supremo, a picture of him and his 2 brothers has been doing the WhatsApp rounds. It talks of the fact that the 3 brothers are actually are from Tamil medium schools from a village in Tamil Nadu and that today they were head honchos. The message being, one doesn’t need to be necessarily from English medium schools to get to the top. Well, not sure even if Natarajan Chandrasekharan will accept that premise today and forward that to his WhatsApp groups!!!