No board exams from 2011 in India?

This bold move by the HRD minister of India to bring in radical change in the Indian education system, shift to a grading system, and eliminate ranking and the mark sheet, triggered a huge furore! In a country where citizens have grown up to 'always' be measured by marks, compared to others who always score well and yet are all rounders, been pushed by our parents to 'study' so much, that they reach a point where they didn't want to hear the word anymore. Somehow even today in India, young people are pushed into engineering and medicine, as they are the most highly respected streams. Such stereotypes make parents put enormous pressure on kids and the competition just gets stronger. Kids cram and prepare for competitive exams and sometime commit suicide when they fail, as they feel they've let down their parents. I'm sure so many Indians of this and the previous generation can relate to this experience unless they 'were' those ideal kids all parents liked to have; good at studies (the greatest stereotype)! Yesterday the HRD minister Mr. Kapil Sibal was called on to one of our news channels (NDTV) to recite a poem he wrote on his and the government's vision in this bold decision.



So many of us in this field of learning and education talk about various ways of engaging the learner, creating a great learning experience rather than dumping information on the learner. Some have even blogged about Killing the curriculum and have made some really bold statements. Harold Jarche makes some great points in his post First, we kill the curriculum and some great discussion came up in the comments on the post. Gilbert actually tried a whole new way of self-learning for several years! I thought that was interesting. I like some points Harold makes:

As books are to subjects and disciplines, the Web is to processes. David Weinberger says that Everything is Miscellaneous, and in our interconnected world it sure is. That means that ALL subjects in school or university are miscellaneous and it doesn’t really matter what you study. It matters how you study and what you can do with your knowledge.

How apt! If you learn and only learn and don't figure out how you can make a significant difference with all you've learned, it does seem futile. Often, Indians are also known for their vast general knowledge. Their ability to dream big and struggle to reach greater heights at all times, is probably ingrained in this 'traditional' system of education and upbringing. This definitely is a good thing, but maybe not all in the population of 1.2 billion can be expected to be run of the mill. In a country where basic education is a struggle to deliver to so many, bringing in such a radical change all of sudden can lead to a lot of chaos, unless it is gradually brought about and with a proper implementation plan that takes into account the deficit in the existing system to take on such a change smoothly. Any change is good, only when it is done keeping in mind everything that is needed to to be done, to reach the vision in mind.

Some interesting statistics on the subject of the use of social media in schools in the U.S. are detailed in this post by Geetha Krishnan. Coming back to the scene in India, here are a few thoughts on what I think maybe issues in the implementation of the new system of grading students:

• The majority (including rural India) existing teachers are certainly not qualified to move into this new system. Existing teaching styles and practices would make the implementation come with a lot of resistance to change. News reports already show so much concern and speculation.
• The existing infrastructure of the majority of schools do not support advanced and alternate means of learning like access to the internet and other learning resources.
  
• 'Making learning fun' calls for not only changing the final event of a board exam, but improving the overall learning experience in schools. In India more often than never, teachers cling to older methods of teaching and it will be very hard to get them out of this. It would stir several out of their comfort zone and this will not help bring value.
  
• Given everything, bringing about a mindset change seems like a major issue to me. The size of the population and our binding to culture, tradition and most importantly 'stereotypes' could make this an implausible proposition at least in the near future.
  
• Just like accepting and imbibing social media in general has come through so much resistance globally, changing the system of education and a new way to look at and design curriculum seems a really long way to go.
  

Given everything, I am positive that change will come, but in its own time, as it is the way of nature as such. But to have the conviction to bring in this change is a quality that is needed going forward. I wish our government good luck in this noble endeavor and hope to see positive outcomes.

Another good point Harold makes in his post:

All fields of knowledge are expanding and artificial boundaries between disciplines are disintegrating. Our education system needs to drop the whole notion of subjects and content mastery and move to process-oriented learning. The subject matter should be something of interest to the learner or something a teacher, with passion, is motivated to teach. The subject does not matter, it’s just grist for the cognitive mill.

I believe this is true and it is only a matter of time before subject-purists start seeing the diminishing lines and start looking at the bigger 'subject' called knowledge. As we evolve as human beings we will slowly start seeing life and learning from the bigger picture and that's what will make the real difference!