The flowering of goodness does not lie in knowing mathematics and biology or in passing examinations and having a successful career. It exists outside there. When there is this flowering, career and other necessary activities are touched by its beauty.
∼ Jiddu Krishnamurti
They are writing their board examination. And possibly, it is a turning point in their life trajectories. However, instead of enabling young learners to know their unique traits and innate possibilities, our exam-centric education with its reckless standardisation causes either the trauma of ‘failure’ or the illusion of ‘success’.
It valorises, stigmatises, eliminates and hierarchies. No wonder, psychic stress or hyper-competitiveness is the name of the game.
After the results, some would join what the ranking machinery designates as ‘branded’ colleges, and eventually, enter into what the emergent techno-corporate empire regards as ‘lucrative’ careers. And for the rest, the pain of being stigmatised or a sense of ‘shame’ and ‘failure’ would be their constant companion. Yes, through exams or their apparent ‘fairness’ and ‘neutrality’, society would further reproduce the structure of inequality.
Not solely that. A game of destroying human possibilities would begin. Someone who could have become a good poet would join an engineering college. Or, for that matter, someone endowed with a high degree of practical skills and social sensibilities – but not skilled in the ‘high status’ knowledge of Mathematics and English – would be compelled to believe that he/she is not good enough.
In other words, examinations as ceremonies of power would further nurture an environment conducive to the growth of a hierarchical and violent mind: one that has missed the ethics of caring and sharing.
Sometimes, I feel that as adults, parents, educationists and ‘system builders’, we have betrayed our children. We have deprived them of a life-affirming education or an emancipatory pedagogy. The only thing we seem to have done is to make them accept violence as a mode of ‘practical living’. It is, therefore, not surprising that they are writing their board examination at a time when as a collective we are celebrating violence –violence in the name of nationalism, militarism and mass psychology of revenge.
Also read: Am I not a ‘True Patriot’ If I’m Against Using Violence to Avenge Pulwama?
Not to speak the language of hyper-masculine aggression is, therefore, seen as cowardice or even ‘anti-national’. These days, we are all warriors. We are not seekers, wanderers and humble learners. A nation at war with its ‘enemy’, and the board examination as a site of war – these are not two different things. Be it the microdomain of school education or the macro domain of nationalism, we are continually learning to be violent, aggressive and non-reflexive.
See the absurdity of this entire game. Possibly, in their English exam, students would be asked to comment on Pablo Neruda and Kamala Das. But then, do these extraordinarily sensitive poets of love and longing, and revolution and redemption really touch them when they see their parents watching noisy television channels and consuming the visuals of all sorts of ‘surgical strikes’, and cherishing the militarisation of the consciousness?
Possibly, in their History paper, they would be asked to write a note on Gandhi. But then, does Gandhi really matter to them when they see that this is the time when the ideology that killed the Mahatma has become triumphant?
And what does it mean to write a paper in Physics when they see that even their science teacher, far from celebrating a spirit of critical consciousness and enquiring mind that the likes of Karl Popper imagined, begin to share Facebook posts arguing that Ganesha was indeed a product of the plastic surgery. Or, is there any meaning in writing a note on secularism in the Political Science paper when their uncles and aunts argue vehemently that Kashmiri students are necessarily traitors, and thereby have to be expelled from academic institutions and given a tough lesson?
Students are being trained to believe that there is no correlation between the book and the world. Follow the rule of this mechanised game like a loyal/disciplined performer, or perish – this is what they are told by school principals, pragmatic parents and career counselors.
So we need not be surprised if we find a successful ‘exam warrior‘ (thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for popularising this violent metaphor) with 99% in Physics, yet intoxicated with the ‘nationalist’ urge to construct the Ram temple at any cost at the controversial site of Ayodhya. Or, for that matter, it is not altogether impossible to find a ‘topper’ in Hindi who seldom feels an affinity with the mental landscape of Nirala or Premchand.
Also read: The Myth of Value-Neutral Teaching
Look at this absurdity of education and exam performance in the larger context of war, violence, obsessive nationalism and media-induced/ manufactured falsehood. It is painful. I know they are our children, and amid ugly politics they are writing the board examination. Even though I convey my best wishes to them, I cannot hide my discomfort. I realise that our children’s education is no less pathological than what we adults do in the name of ‘patriotic violence’.
Yet, it becomes exceedingly difficult to live as a pessimist. This is possibly the reason why even in these bad times, I feel like telling them another story – not of exam performance, but of the rhythm of life Jesus spoke of in his ‘Sermon on the Mount’, or the one Gandhi articulated while walking through the villages of Noakhali.
In this story, there is no ‘exam strategy’ and associated violence. Instead, there is only the music of love, forgiveness and care. And believe it, no meaningful education is possible without this music. The future of our children depends on our willingness to sing this song of the new dawn.
Avijit Pathak is a professor of Sociology at JNU.
