Merit versus cheating

One senior teacher of a secondary school in a small town of Sindh has stayed in my mind. I could see that he was sincere to his vocation. A rare breed indeed. “My students are good in their studies”, he said in a somewhat depressed tone. “But they don’t get good grades”.
I looked at him quizzically. Why? “Because they are poor”, he said. Because they are poor? The answer that I should have immediately guessed was simple. They could not bribe the lowly functionaries of the examining board. And the worst is that those who are familiar with the ground realities of the wasteland that our public education system has become may not even raise their eyebrows at this explanation.
My peg for this recollection is the beginning of the annual matriculation examination in Sindh on Tuesday. The drill will continue until April 21. For the provincial education department, this is surely a major exercise. One report I read said that around 300,000 students are appearing in these exams in Karachi. Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Larkana boards together will be dealing with a similar number.
Unsurprisingly, media reports about this otherwise major event were focused mainly on how rampant cheating was at the various examination centres across the provinces. Another feature of the exercise was the usual confusion and mismanagement in the conduct of the examinations. Stories of how the ‘booti’ mafia operates are also quite familiar. This is what happens every year. We have become so insensitive that we do not see how surreal and horrific these activities are.
Now, I have advisedly chosen this subject for my column in a week that was crowded with flaming headlines of apparently a greater significance. Unanswered questions about what the government intended to do in response to Saudi Arabia’s request for military involvement in the Yemen crisis were reverberating in the political space. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s visit to Islamabad came with its own implications, particularly in the wake of the framework nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers. Besides, Iran is the counterpoint to Saudi Arabia in Yemen’s civil war.
The Supreme Court has also finally constituted a judicial commission to look into alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections. This is Imran Khan’s vindication, in a sense, to compensate for the embarrassment he had to suffer when Khawaja Asif ‘welcomed’ him to the joint session of parliament. For the moment, his attention is devoted to the coming by-election in Karachi and the tension with the MQM in the party’s stronghold is palpable. We also have some comic relief in a contest that is plugged into the ongoing law and order operation in Karachi.
Irrespective of all this, I feel that the matric – the Secondary School Certificate part I and II – examinations have a particular relevance. They affect a very large number of families. The media should explore the impact of this event on the life of the community as such. These examinations open the door to higher education – to college. In that sense, they are a rite of passage for the students and should determine the paths they would take in their future. Matric remains a milestone in an individual’s life.
In our class-based society, divided by wealth and by education itself to the extent that it is meant to empower an individual, we have a separate track that leads to higher destinations. Even in the matric system, high-priced private schools are, metaphorically, another country. But the ordinary people – the masses – have access only to government schools. This is also their constitutional right. Hence, public examinations of this magnitude should be carefully watched by all those who feel concerned about the state of the nation.
Since so many millions of our children are still out of school and not all who are admitted to primary schools make it to the secondary level, these examinations do not generate the kind of commotion that similar examinations do in other countries such as China and South Korea. In fact, I was encouraged to write about our matric examinations by what I have been reading about tests for admission to universities in China. What happens there would be unbelievable for our students and teachers.
The principle difference is the passion and the intensity with which the students prepare for their examinations. Because of the involvement of entire families – a large section of the country’s population – the rhythm of life changes before the examinations are held. Last year, when the National Higher Education Entrance Examinations were held in June, more than nine million students took them. A lot of rote learning is involved and one knows about institutions where students study from 5:30 in the morning to 10:30 in the night.
This truly is mindboggling, the stress that the students and their families have to bear. Yes, some individuals do try to cheat but the measures taken are effective. Essentially, the system does promote excellence. The measure of what it means is also obvious. The quality of manpower and the extent of human resource that China has generated is manifest in its national performance. The entrance examinations, prerequisite for higher education, are called Gaokao – meaning the Big Test.
If it is merit versus unfair means, we have evidence to show how unfair means have percolated down from the top to the bottom and cheating in examinations is a symbolic illustration of how we are drifting to the edge of the precipice. Are our rulers and the powerful establishment inherently incapable of taking care of these simple, managerial assignments? Or are these derelictions deeply rooted in our national psyche?
This brings up the seminal issue of how Pakistan should be educated. There is general agreement on the key role that education plays in the process of building a nation. But some tricky and fundamental issues have not been resolved, such as the problem of medium. I cannot even pretend to go into the complexity of what we need to do in this domain, ranging from literacy to academic research. Education is an equaliser but in Pakistan it is becoming a weapon of oppression.
Would you recommend a joint session of parliament to look into these matters? On the face of it, our legislators have little sense of what is to be done. And they are totally involved in their political wrangles. Meanwhile, the quality of our manpower is persistently declining. Our youth bulge is becoming a terrifying liability. And our state structure seems unable to take care of some ordinary tasks – like holding school examinations.
The writer is a staff member
Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com