Hazards of mass promotions

Teaching and learning is a two-way bridge. While teachers impart necessary training, disseminate knowledge and develop prescribed skills and expertise among their students, latter must reciprocate with added innovative inputs, creative insights and analytical perspectives. While learning is a never ending quest, assessment and evaluation are significant milestones of this journey albeit not the destination. However assessment and evaluation is the logical conclusion and fitting culmination of an effective teaching-learning process without which this transaction remains incomplete and consequently effectiveness of this process remains inconclusive. Learning outcomes of teaching cannot be sufficiently accomplished and ascertained unless students are adequately assessed and evaluated for the same no matter what kind of means and methods are adopted for that purpose. Assessment and evaluation ethically, academically and statutorily binds a student in an uncompromising commitment to learn, fulfill the set criteria and acquire necessary knowledge outlined in the curriculum. Once this binding is scrapped, teaching-learning process becomes rudderless and student’s commitment towards learning is rendered entirely personal rather than obligatory and universal in nature.

It is no hidden secret that in our scheme of things, only a small percentage of our students remains personally committed and sufficiently self-motivated towards learning while unfortunately a vast majority of them, practically speaking, enter educational institutions merely to earn their degrees and subsequently seek jobs to earn their livelihood. More than the students themselves, our  flawed education system needs to be blamed for this debacle. Worldwide, focus of education is rapidly shifting from imposed teaching to self-learning, from obtruded knowledge to self-exploration, from stringently packaged-learning to free and creative thinking but it will take some time in our settings to inculcate that kind of mental attitude, creative ideals and constructive mindset among our students owing to our meager exposure to the best practices followed in the developed world and therefore at this juncture we cannot completely give away our conventional methods of evaluation  overnight. Our transition towards this kind of enlightened thinking has to be gradual and well-calibrated; nevertheless sooner or later this kind of transition has to happen. We have to liberate our education from the shackles of monologous and monotonous  teacher-centered pedagogy to student-centric learning.

Recengly an amalgam of 30 trade bodies in the valley including Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry revealed that Kashmir has witnessed 3000 days of lockdown in the last three decades implying that Kashmir valley has remained shut on account of strikes, curfews and other disturbances for nearly nine years in the last three decades due to which our education sector inter-alia has suffered immensely. As a result of frequent disruptions in the classwork and schooling during this period, many times mass promotions have been accorded to the students in schools, colleges as well as universities of J&K which has resulted into many batches of the students passing out of their schools and graduating from their colleges and universities without facing any examinations. Of late this practice appears to have lead to a sweet tooth, for such promotions or large scale deductions in the syllabi, among our students. However it is a dangerous trend fraught with disastrous consequences upon our budding generations. Students can now be seen going on strikes, boycotting their classes demanding mass promotions or syllabus deductions particularly as an aftermath of the lockdown enforced by the government. They have started claiming mass promotions as their fundamental right that cannot be denied to them. This way we are aiding and abetting churning out of graduated illiterates or uneducated graduates from our colleges and universities. In absence of any robust evaluation and examination system, most of our students do not deem it necessary to study and learn deeply what has been prescribed in their syllabi. If the degrees keep coming to them on a silver platter most of them won’t bother to study except those few students who are always committed to learn by dint of their inherent zeal and zest.

Instead of developing novel and innovative ways to assess and evaluate the students in tune  with fast changing global trends wherein adapting a virtual lifestyle has become a new norm, we sometimes find it easier to dole out mass promotions to the students at large and absolve ourselves of all responsibilities of evaluating the basic pre-requisites of graduation among our students. This way we are paving way for a long-term deterioration of our society since this act amounts to slow poisoning of our roots because mass promotions will lead to graduates sans any knowledge, skills and competencies. We will be producing doctors without any knowledge of how to treat, engineers without any skills of how to build, teachers and professors without any competencies of how to teach, lawyers sans any knowledge about the laws of the land, scientists without any insight about the real ethos of science, artists without any clue about the concept of art, economists without any inkling of the principles of economy, so on and so forth. People will be holding degrees in their hands without any aptitude and know-how about their area of expertise making those degrees merely worth a piece of paper. Such graduates can hardly be expected to contribute significantly towards nation building and knowledge society. They will be graduates sans any knowledge capital and devoid of any proficiency and expertise in their area of graduation or specialization.

There is no denying the fact that frequent shutdowns in the valley have taken a toll on the education sector making regular classwork in our educational institutions a long-cherished dream and affecting students drastically, both academically as well as psychologically. Students are finding it hard to receive knowledge from their teachers seamlessly building more pressure upon them to study on their own and explore educational resources for themselves. Though some online teaching has been initiated post-covid lockdown in April this year, due to low internet speed and poor connectivity students have been finding it hard to attend online lectures without any disruptions. Teachers have also been finding it hard to upload audio/video files and even powerpoint presentations over various online platforms like Google Classroom etc. It is high time for the government to restore high speed internet in the interest of our academics. Less than 50% of students have been able to attend online classes and even this percentage is facing lot of difficulties in downloading course material and attending lectures without any upsetting disturbances. Overall it has been a very discouraging and unpleasant experience for the teachers whose work including their teaching, research output, extension and outreach activities have been drastically affected by these frequent lockdowns. They have not been able to attend any scientific conferences nor have they been able to present or publish any research papers which are direly needed for their academic growth and career progression. Past one year has been the most unproductive year in their career. However mass promotion is no solution to this problem faced by the students. All students must strive to appear in online internal assessment by hook or by crook as our school-going children have managed to do. 

Biggest lesson learnt over the last two decades of turmoil has been that all educational institutions must create and strengthen their online teaching platforms and virtual classrooms where they can maintain attendance of students, interact with them and answer their queries in real-time, monitor all online classes from one place, assess and evaluate them online, where audio and video files can be shared and uploaded freely and where students can complete and submit their assignments too. Education must not be allowed to suffer under any circumstances for education is the only hope. Students must continue to attend online classes in spite of the flaws and short-comings of online teaching using networks running at a snail’s pace and they must be assessed internally using online platforms at the end of the session. Assessment may include MCQ-based questions, oral viva, brief presentations on specific topics or sub-topics randomly selected by the teacher on-the-spot, problem-based learning using case studies allowing open-book examination wherever required, group discussions, continuous assessment and other activities based on teamwork and outcome-based learning. Any online mode of assessment that evaluates and ensures that the students have acquired sufficient knowledge and gained sufficient skills and competency in their respective subjects will suffice the need, no matter which platform or method is used to test the same. Teachers who teach their students throughout the semester must be given full autonomy to internally assess and evaluate them online by all possible means. That will be perfectly in consonance with the concept of living with the coronavirus.

Main focus of our students whether at school, college or university level should always be on learning in its real essence rather than on passing examinations and gaining degrees. They need to introspect what and how much they have learnt at the end of the academic session rather than how many marks and certificates they have obtained because they need to understand that degrees and certificates sans sufficient knowledge, aptitude and skills will be of no avail in today’s competitive world. If we try to appropriate the system to our advantage by unscrupulous  and unwarranted means we will be fooling ourselves not the system. Gimmickry and politicking for the sake of passing examinations and gaining degrees will not stand anyone in a good stead since such activities will prove to be self-defeating and detrimental in the long run in terms of evolving ourselves as empowered citizens and significant contributors towards nation building. While vociferously pushing for mass promotions we need to make a hard choice whether we want to develop ourselves as knowledgeable graduates or graduated illiterates. It is time that we strengthen our resolve and commitment towards gaining knowledge and emerging as learnt and proficient citizens so that we can live upto the challenges thrown by the twenty first century and bring our society out of the morass of skill-deprivation and dependency.