All over India, Class XII students are now cramming feverishly. With the final exams scheduled next month — and future college admissions hinging on how well they do in them — those in their final year at school really don't have much time to reflect on the materials they ingest. But for adults with a little more leisure, a look at official guidelines and sample question papers can prove a revelation.
To study how students are examined nowadays, there's a convenient source at hand. Sample question papers are freely available in the market and on the internet. Take the Central Board of Secondary Education's official website (www.cbse.nic.in). For sociology, for example, the CBSE website offers two sample papers, with the marking guidelines for them. Ignore the execrable grammar, punctuation and spelling and simply compare the questions set with the points listed — complete with the marks to be awarded for each of them — in the marking schemes provided.
Question No. 13 in the first sociology sample paper is: "Mention two features of education which bring social change?" To this, one of the correct answers specified is: "It acts as an agent of social change." If, as in the second sample paper, the question is: "How has society modernised through education?", an element of the correct answer reads: "It has acted as a strong modernising force."
There's more. If the question is: "What is meant by legislation?" (No. 9, for two marks), then you get one mark for writing: "The term social legislation plays a dynamic role in society", and another for, "They are effective instruments of social change." If the question is: "What is elementary education?", the point your answer required to make is that "Elementary education is recognised as a fundamental right of all citizens of India between 6 and 14 years age group." You may marvel at what constitutes an answer to a question.
{{/usCountry}}There's more. If the question is: "What is meant by legislation?" (No. 9, for two marks), then you get one mark for writing: "The term social legislation plays a dynamic role in society", and another for, "They are effective instruments of social change." If the question is: "What is elementary education?", the point your answer required to make is that "Elementary education is recognised as a fundamental right of all citizens of India between 6 and 14 years age group." You may marvel at what constitutes an answer to a question.
{{/usCountry}}Globalisation and liberalisation are important exam topics. You should be able to say: "Liberalisation is the economic content of globalisation. It is a process under which highly regulated economy is transferred into an autoworld looking economy." Further, on liberalisation, you should write that "Industry takes place by dismantling units." Discard any doubts about such a dubious development strategy! Another question: "Mention any two ancient universities of India." The correct answers include: "Shanti Niketan" — an institution whose foundation stone was laid in 1918 and which became a registered public body in 1921!
By the official examiner's yardstick, 'correct answers' include tautologies, non-sequiturs, errors and plain gobbledygook. It strikes me that, contrary to what we are often told, the main enemy of social science education in India is not any particular ideology, but a more diffused idiocy.
I wonder how professors I admire would fare in CBSE exams. I'm willing to bet that they would be stumped. Faced with question No. 15 in the sociology sample paper — "Explain any four main features of sociological perspective" — they may delude themselves that they have rather a lot to say. But they would never guess that the correct answer prescribes, and I quote verbatim: "(i) It is holestic approach as it takes into account the problem of population its totality (ii) It provides a promising framework of analysis (iii) More appropriate to Indian situation (iv) Children are regarded as social and cultural assets."
Here's another one: "Explain negative effects of the media." The correct answer includes: "Leads to passivity", "kills individual test" and "leads to cultural homogeneration".
Slipshod in many ways, the sample papers are meticulous in others. Enormous concern is shown for the distribution of marks within each paper. Thirty per cent of the marks are meant to be allotted for 'knowledge', 50 per cent for 'understanding' and 20 per cent for 'application'. Or, classified in another way: 24 marks for three long answers (LAs) of about 200 words each; 48 marks for 12 short answers (SAs) of about 75 words each: and 28 marks for 14 very short answers (VSAs) of about 30 words each. A topic like 'Unity and Diversity' is given a weight of exactly eight marks.
So students are made aware of exactly what is expected of them. Examiners are told exactly what to award marks for. High standards of objectivity are probably maintained. The CBSE creates activities flawless in form — even if often empty in content.
There is another way of looking at the whole exercise. Each sample question contains a key word in the corresponding NCERT textbook. Each correct answer contains phrases in the textbook near the point where the catchword appears. Thus, when the question is: "Explain the Christian community life in India," the correct answer includes "Love to the neighbour," because the phrase 'Love to the neighbour' occurs in the textbook! A student who has memorised the textbook would feel perfectly — and instantly — at home with what's going on.
Where the layman or academic expects a question paper, the smart student merely sees a set of cues. Behind a façade of knowledge and understanding, a culture of repetition reigns supreme. The successful candidate knows which parts of the textbooks to recite. And this is how our secular education creates its own holy books.
As a university teacher, I've been privileged to teach some excellent students. I look on them as survivors, because their minds could so easily have perished, for no fault of their own, in a system of the crassest rote learning. As for the CBSE, I think it should adopt the parrot as its emblem.
The writer teaches at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi