Come March, and thousands of students will be playing “the gamble of their lives” as they take their board examinations. As usual, the stakes are very high. Through their performance, the students will either bring laurels or infamy to their families. If their performance is good, their parents would be able to boast about “my son, the engineer” or “my daughter, the doctor”. If their performance is bad, there would be teary eyes and barely-concealable shame and misery.
As for the students themselves, two similar scenarios await when the results are announced: one, where they are lauded by everybody from parents to teachers to friends, relatives and in rare cases, even the media and government. Two, where they suffer from depression, anxiety, panic attacks or even worse take further extreme steps.
It was the month of February, 1999. A teenage boy was going through a strange sense of uncertainty that he had never experienced before. A topper throughout his preprimary, primary and secondary school, he was about to face the “boards”. He had often thought about the Board exams—what was the secret to cracking them? How were they so different from the exams he used to appear in till the year before?
Somehow, he was able to clear the first hurdle of his life, Class X, with flying scores. He thought he had tamed the “beast” quite successfully. But alas, his new-found confidence was about to crash soon.
He performed “badly” in Class XII. Suddenly, from the straight road leading towards his dream (or rather the dream of his parents and peer group) of becoming a doctor or an engineer, he found himself at a crossroads with signage depicting humanities, commerce and other streams.
It led him to eventually take up a subject like mass media in his postgraduate course, with the result that he became a media person rather than an engineer or a doctor. Eighteen years after crossing his first hurdle and sixteen after having failed to cross his second, he is writing these words rather than sitting in a clinic or in the office of a multi-national firm.
Sometimes I wonder, should I feel happy that I performed badly in my Class XII exams? To be honest I should, because if I had scored well then, I would have had to pursue the dreams of my parents and my peer group, not MY own which I could pursue only after getting bad marks! Unfortunately, what I had to suffer—the immense stress and pressure—is continuing. And increasing. In this respect, I think those of my generation were luckier.
At least, we had time for leisure, for roaming around and for fun. Today, the story has changed completely. Now it’s all read, read and read. Prepare, prepare and prepare. And prepare for what? Success in board exams. Why don’t we teach kids how to face failure? Since when did failure become a sin?
The first doubts regarding India’s system of educational evaluation crept inside me when I did “badly” in Class XII. I realized the system’s absurdity when I saw that I got rid of the subjects that I hated and pursued the ones that I loved only through my “bad result”.
When I look around the world, I see the situation is no different. Be it the West or the Far East, everybody is interested in making their kids “technical robots”. Throughout his presidency, outgoing US President Barack Obama harped on the fact that “Indian and Chinese children were striving hard to outeducate their American peers in mathematics and technology.” This is validated by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, which is held every three years since 2000 for assessing children of various nations of the globe in three subjects: math, science and reading. In test after test, a few nations have stood out: South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. The secret of their success: cramming, rote learning, intense focuses on math and science—we in India are familiar with all that, aren’t we?
But then, I come across another nation that that has stood out as well: Finland.
The Finnish system of education is based on the idea of equality and not excellence. All children must receive equal opportunities of education rather than some students being churned out to be the best. Finland has outperformed everybody else (except the East Asians). And its children do not even have to appear in competitive exams—till the age of 17-19! Yes. Let me repeat—till the age of 17-19! There is more. All students in Finland receive a free education until they complete their university studies. All pupils receive free school meals, resources and materials, transport and support services.The Finnish curriculum is far less “academic” than one would expect—Finnish students do the least number of class hours per week in the developed world. Teacher-based assessments are used by schools to monitor students’ progress and these are not graded, scored or compared; but instead are descriptive and utilised in a formative manner to inform feedback and assessment for learning.
Till 2015, education experts of the world were falling on top of one another to find out the secret behind Finland’s success as an “education superpower”. However, in 2015, Finland's scores dropped in all three categories: 11 points in science, five points in reading and 10 points in maths. Finland is now ranked 12th in maths, fifth in science and fourth in reading.
Not that the Finns are concerned. In an interview to The Washington Post, Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator and leading figure in education policy in Finland said, “The PISA test is not seen in Finland as a trigger for education reforms. There will be no new policy changes that would be inspired by the same in Finland…The Finnish way of thinking is that the best way to address insufficient educational performance is not to raise standards or increase instruction time (or homework) but make school a more interesting and enjoyable place for all.”
I wonder how Finland thinks differently from the rest of the world. Why can’t our education system planners think like Finns? I wish I had studied in an education system like Finland’s. I am not sure whether I would have become a media person or pursued some other profession. But I would have had a meaningful childhood if I would have got education based on the idea of equality rather than one based on mindless competition that we have in India, the first casualty of which is our childhood.
(This was first published in the 1-28 February 2017 edition of the Gobar Times.)
Associate Editor, Down To Earth Web, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi. His main interests include history, wildlife, culture, cuisine, theology, and indigenous peoples.