The annual ritual honouring classroom gurus on Teachers Day was pepped up this year with the active participation of the First Citizen as well as the government’s executive head. Both had something new to offer. President Pranab Mukherjee captivated students by taking a political history class at a school inside Rashtrapati Bhavan complex, with anecdotal insights of how he had to walk 5 km to school and hated it.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi served up some food for thought while addressing students by proposing that children leaving school be given “aptitude certificates” rather than just marksheets and character certificates, to help them chart their future life and career.
While such a certificate may mean little in determining how a student is placed in further studies or a job in the Indian environment, if the concept is taken seriously and the system pays attention to a young person’s capabilities and leanings than just scholastic achievements, there is every chance of progress for society as a whole.
The other significant statement Prime Minister Modi made was to counsel parents to stop trying to determine what their offspring should take up as a career. They should first try to judge their children’s aptitude and guide them rather than force on them predetermined career choices, that heavily lean towards engineering and medical seats.
One must remember, however, that despite the Prime Minister’s good intentions, there is a grave danger of our nation’s endemic corruption reducing the process of judging a young person’s aptitude to a farce. As positives and negatives must find a place in any such reckoning of capabilities, it might just work provided, of course, there is sincerity in the process and it is taken up where good infrastructure and dedicated teachers already exist.
To take this idea forward, the education infra should be receptive: what is most needed is qualitative assessment that teachers can provide. To keep them interested, they must also be paid more. To raise teachers’ salaries across the board is a fundamental reform that is vital before the system can be upgraded from its marks-obsessed approach.
While it is largely true that our entire education system, as we know it from the late 19th century, is oriented towards the needs of Western industrial societies, ways must be found soon to allow real talent to flourish in the field it is best suited to, which is why early assessment of aptitude is important. Effecting a positive systemic change is a huge challenge that goes far beyond the infrastructure and teacher hunt processes that are key features of rural India. As a rule, however, it would be best if we paid teachers more and involved them actively in the process of aptitude determination.
