Why There’s No Glory in Topping CBSE Board Exams

“In this thoughtless rush for TRPs, we will ignore the larger damage caused”, writes Akshat Tyagi.

Once the results are out, those who slammed the boards as being ‘a fundamentally flawed examination system’ will fawn over the toppers. (Photo: Liju Joseph/The Quint)

Come CBSE results day, our media will run naked with its obsession with the exam toppers. The year-long blabber about the rotting education system and its overemphasis on testing will all turn meaningless as the highest scorers are garlanded.

What was until yesterday, ‘a fundamentally flawed examination system,’ will now be given prime-time coverage. Yes, the dumb script will be repeated.

However, in this thoughtless rush for TRPs, we will ignore the larger damage caused. In honouring those who aced the game, we will further legitimise it.

When it’s no secret that the CBSE boards are hollow in what they assess, unforgiving in their annual nature, impersonalised in their standardisation, and very unpredictable in manual evaluation – there are simply no reasons for which they should be celebrated.

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Board Marks are Not a Measure of Anything

When we interview the toppers and they tell us how they spent 10+ hours studying for the boards, we may pat them on the back for their perseverance. But the fact that this system has become poisonous for our children should make us hang our heads in shame.

The board exams were designed to be the end of a beautiful journey of learning. But they have become both – the terminal journey, and its end.

If you spend even 6-10 hours every day trying to calibrate yourself to one year-end exam, you are not a genius, you are an idiot. You have chosen to forego every other learning opportunity your last year of schooling had to offer, and instead decided to become a creature of the system.

The boards, in their present state, are not a measurement of anything, not even academic excellence.

The Detrimental Nature of Media’s Linear Coverage

The CBSE assumes that the boards are a gauge that can accurately define millions of diverse children. Rather than questioning them, we romanticise the boards until they become central to the whole discourse about education.

Though the media might occasionally put this linear view under scrutiny, in the finale of this ugly theatre, it becomes desperately complacent. It comfortably compounds the evil of ranking and standardisation.

If this isn’t a theatre, then what is it? When the ultimate verdict of your learning is based on five three-hour papers, the whole process is left to be only a preparation to impress someone alien to you. The evaluator is paid less than half a dollar for every paper that is examined, with no knowledge of who you are.

Somebody will mechanically award marks with reference to an answer key – which you cannot even question – and your fate is sealed within ten minutes. This isn’t efficiency, it’s a cruel joke played on those who believe in this system.

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Those who secure ranks are, in fact, guilty of two things. First, surrendering to the unjust system. Second, not having the humility to acknowledge that their achievement is purely a random event.

If they dared to use their newfound media attention to explain the inhuman costs at which a 99 percent is scored, or calling out the CBSE for what it has made of this process, the future would have been brighter.

But their silence reaffirms my faith that they have no critical thinking skills or creative courage to rebel. They are docile and under-confident. They use the CBSE boards only to find self-worth and legitimacy.

Also Read: CBSE Results 2017: ‘Stress Not Worth It,’ Say Class 12 Students

I am not suggesting that we deprive individuals of their choice to participate in and excel at this game – however unfair it may seem to us – but that we remain critical of it. Gullible children are not the targets of my fury, the target is rather the model of schooling that keeps them enslaved to its own narrative.

We should not talk about toppers, because education is not a derby of horses – children cannot be ranked based on who ran faster on a given day. Board results are personal achievements, not public announcements. Life is not a contest, nobody comes first or last.

(Akshat Tyagi is the author of 'Naked Emperor of Education', India's first young voice against the schooling model. He tweets @AshAkshat. 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.)