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wnt BMUii xtr How to Make SSC Exam Less Hilarious

by Waheedul Haque
STRANGE things have been happening to that most Important part of our education system, namely the IO year schooling or sec ondary level, ever since tbr comlng of Pakistan. One thought there would be an end to that once the Bengalee peo pie who formed the majority of that British gift of a nation, and their culture and language would find their rightful place in the national scheme of things Well, that was not lo be keeping the framework of Pak Iatan Intact Bengalees had to have a separate independent state to achieve that. So they .carved out that state with matchless sacrlike and hero ism In the first few years of Independence there sere very many encouraging signs that the government was taking education seriously Gigantk strides were made and radical policy changes effected to wards realising what has been lately made a slogan of Educa tton for all.
But. as with everything else, the healthy trend In education made an about-turn in late "75 for reasons universally recog niaed In Bangladesh. Queer, even eerie things started hap pen Ing to education once again — and we couldn't make a meaningful move ettlter towards Improving the literacy rate or increasing the number of universities to any respectable figure. In the bargain non secular theological dogma based backward-looking educa tton was spread at the cost of setting up new schools and colleges manned with teachers Imbibing modem attitudes of democratic tolerance and social consciousness and an awareness of the scientific and technological revolution.
Buffeted by all kinds of attempts at half baked and most ill-advised reforms and violent massive movements against them — education came lo mean almost wholly getting hold of the question papers before the examinations and making a brisk business of that widespread leakage — and then wholesale copying at the examination centres. The eduMl tonal establishment, by now having been bereft of Ideas and Interests tn educational philosophies and education s rote tn building a truly civilised polity _ rushed to plug the holes that were shamefully showing the hollowness of ev erything al all levels of educa tton
One of the results of that rush to a solution of copying -which wu but a puny pari of the whole disease was resort Ing to an objective-question based evaluation system And the outcome was there for all to see when the SSC results were published this year That was the silliest and the strangest thing of all that has happened to Bangladesh s edu cat tonal sector Al) stars and first divisions — and a pass percentage double that of the previous year The very idea of the three boards of secondary education taking political bid
ding as to how much grace mark to award and up to what pass percentage should the ex aminees papers be managed to — Is totally anti-educational and absolutely nauseating It is things like these macro ma nlpulations and not the actual education imparted in the classroom and Imbibed by the pupil and put to test and evalu atlon and gradation In the ex aminations that formed the entirety of education in the na tton. To set it all right Is a tall order The very first thing that cries out for redress la the examination farce of 1992. Following Is a resuscitation pre scriptton.
We must first come to accept the reality that, however farcical the present secondary level evaluation system Is, or for that matter detrimental to the cause of the cultivation of the intellectual, aesthetic and moral faculties of the tender boys and girls, this system cannot Just be wished away In the matter of a year it Is just not possible to make the ex-aminations revert to the old and tested ways from the very next year. If thia la true, the other truth of the matter to perhaps more Important If this has to continue, even for one more time, something must be done to It to lessen the harm It does and to make It somewhat acceptable to sen sib Ie people.
Concerned people have been one In thinking that the examinee, in order to pass, must secure the pass mark In the non objective half required to be written, independent of whatever he or she gets In the other half. That should mean that passing the writing half is a must for passing the subject as a whole Although this is quite justified a suggestion — one towards which the exami nations must be made to move If the objective multi-choice
ticking thing has at all to be retained, put Into practice right at this moment this is sure to lead to a wholesale massacre of lakhs of students.
In order to give the exams a semblance of usefulness and at the same time Io avoid such a massacre ft Is suggested very strongly that no examinee may pass SSC unless she or he sc cures 10 out of the 50 In the written half of the paper
The task of bringing some sense Into the so called objec live half Is no less Important. The first thing that strikes everyone of average IQ Is — why was there no provision for negative marking for wrong ticking? In the absence of such, even the examinees knew that perfectly random ticking born of perfect ignorance of the subject was guar-anteed to give them at least 20 per cent mark and with some preparation It was possible to lake It to around 00 per cent
Then they had their lucky strike. They got hold of all the five hundred questions which contained their questions. It was now a matter of hours to get Into the head 500 bits of Information — with little refer ence to the subject — and while taking the exam devote full 50 minutes to tick 50 given answers One never thought life and the world was so easy
The whole problem lay with the formation of the Task force that devised the bank of about 5.000 objective multiple-choice questions. The paper setters of the different Boards and subjects were asked to borrow their questions from this bank. This was a wrong thing to do The task force s questions should have served the paper setters as something to model their own questions on — and nothing more
As in the first case of the written part, we do not want
to remedy things at one go We propose that for two wrong tickings the examinee loses one point. And that time for ticking these questions be brought down to 20 minutes and not a second more And that It must be ensured that the examinees have no way to know beforehand of the store of questions from which theirs would be taken.
This then Is the recipe for making the SSC exams somewhat workable but only for a couple of years by which time the educational pundits will have cooled their heads and devised something leading to better evaluation of the know! edge and skill the students have picked In the schools
The above suggestions have very little to do with education as such which goes on lan guishing in its state of total neglect - by the govern men I and by the political parties and all associations of people, by teachers as well as the guardians — and above all by the students themselves Improving the ways of examining the student s Mate of education should presuppose that some education of whatever quality has been imparted to the Mu-dent to be examined and that the examinee has exercised himself or herself in the activ Ity called education tn response to an urge from within And this is what has been wanting tn most of those that lake the SSC exams, or for that mattej. any other examination Then what Is the use of Improving the examinations?
In fact the defective and anti education nature of the prevailing modes of examina tion has been largely, if not wholly, determining the nature of the academic activity that goes on in the schools The questions In the examinations are the be-all and end-all tn the schools — and not language skills and knowledge and cultivation of feeling and apprecl-
■tton of beauty and values Then there builds up a tremendous pressure tn see that the questions come repeating from a fund not exceeding thirty for a subject It takes a teacher of average IQ very little work to bring that box of questions out of which the final exam questions must be chosen down to containing not more than IB questions That applies too for a student of rather high IQ A band of students bent on doing good, of whatever calibre, through collective Intelligence can very well guess five questions of every paper correctly If not all six And they do It by targeting not more than the above-men Honed 15
What education amounts to. as a whole. In the schools Is committing to memory dictated or copied answers to some of these short-list of questions. The guardians and teachers participate In this game of nullifying education and all prospects of it In the future years of the student. They do It with zest How can they make such an easy Job of IT? Rsrsasi there is something fundamentally wrong with our system of education and its evaluation The boards that evaluate do not teach. Those that teach do not evaluate. Outwardly it is the teachers who set the papers and who mark the answer scripts The truth is far more complicated. The paper-setters do not do their job according to the dictates of their own education and knowledge They are made to fail in some pre determined long practised Une By moderators or whatever How do the examiners mark the papers? They too have to follow briefing and not all of their fall marks' are respected — thanks to the grace mark' tradition The paper setters do not know what the examinees have actually been taught the examiners do not know that either They do not need to. Because the
questions set tn the previous few years and it is known to the examiners that the exami nees know the questions and have been tau^it to or otherwise made to prepare for answering those questions.
This Is what must result if you spend Miltona of Taka on paylng tcachers^wbose pernor monitored — and^hardly one per cent of thym are themselves properly equipped to do their,— both attltudtnally and Intellectually _ thanks to the employing authorities, utter neglect to them and com plete absence of facilities and incentives for their development as teachers. This is what must result when, after spend Ing billions, you cannot have either one single bloomer-free text-book or a school book bearing signs of modern enlightenment.
The question and-copied answer bound system of lined ucation will take long to heal. But a start must be made. And there is all the need to make haste — the bus of 21st century civilisation Is all set to start and we can afford to miss It only to our own peril — individual as well as national