CBSE Row Calls for Democratisation of Education

The problem isn’t with paper leaks, it is with the examination boards themselves, argues Akshat Tyagi.

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“Who is responsible for the leak of Class 10 and 12 CBSE question papers?” Never before have teenagers become stewards of such ugly political debates. While the Opposition found a way to pin the blame on the Prime Minister himself, the government wasted no time in managing headlines about the PM’s very personal concern in the whole crisis.

Holding a non-political institution, an education board, accountable for an accident was not alluring enough.

Democratisation of Education Required

Prakash Javadekar, while himself assuring that more secure solutions would be found to prevent a paper theft in the future, also reportedly asked students to find ways to make exams "leak-proof" at an event in New Delhi. He and his government have successfully become the victims of a ‘security lapse’ that they owed no responsibility towards.

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A disaster that could have stirred serious conversation about the logic of testing millions of children’s knowledge through a question paper, has been wasted for stupid political brownie points.

The movement has to be about the democratisation of the learning system in the country. CBSE has to be stripped of its dictatorial power to determine learning outcomes for our children. We need to invent creative localised and personalised mechanisms to provide feedback at schools. The five-day interrogation of our children and its bogus declaration of measuring their worth has to be called out.

Superficial Autonomy

Recently the Delhi University Teachers’ Association held a massive protest against the government’s move to give autonomy to 62 universities, which they alleged was not academic autonomy but only financial. But a large section of students in public universities are already a product of private schools with economic self-reliance. Isn’t it high time that schools be given real academic autonomy to manage themselves, beginning with the private ones?

Now that privatisation of school education is an accepted reality, is it time to let the market play itself out? If schools don’t help create independent, thinking, creative citizens, they have failed in their task. CBSE’s hollow validation shouldn’t keep them in the business if they aren’t working.

We have to seriously begin questioning the purpose of a country-wide assessment of learning-outcomes. Is learning such a universal check-box? What are the alternative solutions to university admissions? That is the conversation we should be having.

A Betrayal of Our Children’s Trust

The centralised and standardised testing model of examinations is like an arrogant tyrant who wants to personally terrorise all his subjects. It is in this absolute exercise of control that his failures rupture occasionally. In our selfish short-sightedness, we are asking for more security guards, more guns and tanks for our own oppression.

Not only is the homogeneous criteria a grave betrayal of the faith our kids place in us, but it is a pathetically inefficient system prone to all kinds of deceits and frauds.

We have to step away from the illiteracy of quantification, and seek more organic judgements. Ask kids how they used what they learnt at school in life, ask them what they un-learnt, ask them what they built or helped in creating, ask them how they failed. Ask them if their year at school added anything meaningful to their lives. Ask them questions that matter to them.

To have enslaved our children to year-end examinations and robbed them of all freedom to experiment and create is damaging to their future. We are once again repeating the error of preparing an entire generation for the service of institutions and to facilitate others’ innovations. What use is a leak-proof education model when 3 crore people apply for 90,000 railway jobs? The problem isn’t the leaks, it is the Boards themselves.

(Akshat Tyagi is the author of '’Naked Emperor of Education', India's first young voice against the de-humanising schooling model. He regularly writes on education, society, and politics. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)