KAGA BHUSHAUNDI SPEAKETH
Suman K Sharma
Exams are over and the season of results has set in, and so has the movement of youngsters who have got a short breather from their hectic daily schedule of home-to-school-to-home-to-tutor-to-home-to-school-to…My nephew Sonu has come from Lucknow to visit me after having written his class XII exam. Sonu wants to ‘become healthy’ (that is, put on weight- ‘Papa says my arms are so thin!’), make ‘whole lot of money’, ‘visit (!) abroad’ and – this is his uppermost ambition – grow taller ‘to impress girls’ (he giggles). I ask him how tall he is and he says, ‘Uncle Ji, I am five feet nine and I want to add three more inches.’ Sonu has lately grown fond of practicing his English on one and all, bothering little about Grammar or any such hassles. ‘To tum unhattar inches ke ho; what will be that in centimeters?’ I ask him casually. ‘You means seventy-nine inches? I tell you in a minute…’ Sonu says and starts fiddling with his mobile. ‘Are you going to seek Papa’s help to convert inches into centimeters?’ I enquire. ‘No, I am Googling only. Google has everything you want to know,’ he informs me knowingly. I marvel at the boy to whom ‘unhattar’ is ‘seventy-nine’ in English and who has to Google to convert inches into centimeters.
Why are our Sonus so dumb?
‘Because, my son, you discount knowledge but want only results.’ The grating voice of Kaga Bhushundi Ji disturbed my rumination.
‘You confound me, Kaga Ji’ said I. ‘We are approaching universal enrolment in our schools. Over 12 lakh schools, 15437 colleges and 620 universities teach students from kindergarten to post-graduate courses in engineering, medicine and other subjects. And you say we discount knowledge! Yes, we want results. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Schools and colleges alone do not mean better education. Name one Indian institution that ranks creditably in the world outside. What are the results worth when your graduates and post-graduates go jobless for years together?’
‘But Kaga Ji, it was our education system that produced C.V. Raman, P.C. Ray, S. Ramanujam, Hargobind Khorana, Meghnatha Saha – I can count a score of such names!’
‘Bas bas – don’t waste your breath. The luminaries you name only show by contrast how your standards have fallen. In Uttar Pradesh, the 17-year old son of an auto-rickshaw driver committed suicide. He, poor child, could not pay the entire amount to his school principal to be allowed to copy answers at his Class X exam! Copying has become a roaring business there for school principals, school managers and those running private coaching centers. You don’t need to go to an examination hall to pass senior secondary exam – if you can pay adequately for the privilege.’
‘Kaga Ji, they resort to copying because they don’t devote enough time to their studies.’
‘Are students allowed adequate time to imbibe knowledge? A child is in Class IX and the parents start thinking of preparing her for the entrance exam of an IIT or the AIIMS. Teachers are in a bedazzling hurry to ‘finish off’ their syllabus. Tutors force-feed their students to the point of mental diarrhea, sapping their innate capacity to learn. Policy-makers bend their own policies to selfish ends. Nobody is bothered about learning.
‘Like a crow that you are Kaga Ji, you have eyes only for the dung heap. Tell us how we make the system deliver.’
‘Learning is the foremost right of all students. Grant them their right.’
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