Failing to Fail

As another academic year draws to a close India will fail millions of its children – by not failing them in class. The idea might seem perverse but there seems to be substantial evidence (see the Annual Status of Education Report 2012) to suggest that the policy that dictates that all students in elementary schools cannot be detained in any class seems to be failing. Here’s a sample statement culled from the rather worrisome ASER 2012 report:

“In 2008, the proportion of children in Std 3 who could read a Std 1 text was under 50%, which has dipped about 16 percentage points to nearly 30%. A child in Std 3 has to learn to do two digit subtraction, but the proportion of children in government schools who can even recognise numbers up to 100 correctly has dropped from 70% to near 50% over the last four years with the real downward turn distinctly visible after 2010, the year RTE came into force.” [pp 1, ASER 2012]

The tragedy is: the students who are the supposed beneficiaries of this flawed policy are being hurt the most. Of course, they do not know it yet. And when the realisation does dawn on them will they be thankful to the powers that are for rendering them so powerless?

There are two chief arguments that proponents of the policy of no detention put forward in its defence – first that it will lower the dropout rates and second that detaining children in lower classes demotivates children from pursuing education to its logical end. One may tend to agree with these, at least in principle. However, in practice, neither of these assertions seems to justify the policy as it now stands.

First, the question of drop-out rates. The ASER report, among others, clearly suggests that the dropout rate has gone up since the RTE was implemented. It is important to keep in mind that dropout rates are not singly the function of academic non-performance. There are several socio-economic factors that determine a child’s ability to continue his/her education. There is no dearth of examples of deserving students not being able to continue their education.

Secondly, if we are to assume that the motivation of a student to learn and acquire a proper education depends merely, or even chiefly, upon him/her being promoted to the next grade then there has to be something fundamentally flawed with the way children’s psychological development is considered in this context. And how about this statement from a rather discerning student that flies in the metaphorical face of this unpretty argument : ‘Passing students who don’t actually pass the test makes the rest of us look like fools.’ How about that for ‘motivation’?

Let me move away from abstractions and give the reader a concrete example to illustrate the fallacy of the policy’s premise. I had a rather disconcerting conversation with a persistently underperforming – and this is to put it very mildly – student of mine. When quizzed about his negligence of studies the student bluntly responded that he “did not have to study” until he got to 9^th grade. He is under the impression that he will “start studying” when he gets there because it is only then that studying is going to matter. Pointing out to him that it’d be very hard for him to grasp anything at that late stage if he hasn’t got his basics right only elicited a contemptuous scoff. He told me that there are always other ‘ways’ to get a pass certificate.

That a twelve-year-old is aware of the venality that will help him wriggle through the loopholes in the system is unsurprising. What ought to make us anxious is that the idea pervades all strata of students, at all rungs of academic achievement. A straw poll conducted across five classrooms (7^th grade and above) in the school showed that the students at least knew someone who had found a “way” out of the failing in the tenth board exams. A not insignificant number of them knew someone who knew someone who could show them the “way”.

Considering that the school that this author teaches in (an under-resourced private affair in sub-urban Mumbai) is a microcosm of what goes on in schools in general, it is safe to assume the brew of students’ ‘motivation’ (or the lack thereof), the attendant teachers’ apathy and the false sense of security and complacency that the policy tends to induce in parents is a lethal cocktail of venom coursing through the societal veins.

The antidote (or at least those in this author’s humble opinion) to the problem will be the subject of the next post.

[The author is a Teach For India fellow and can be reached at rahul.kashyap@ed-alumni.net]