The CBSE examination paper leak is the last straw. This year certainly does not bode well for India. On the one hand we have a banking system that has failed to prevent slick thieves from making away with thousands of crores of public money. Then we have Facebook admitting to leaking our data to market sharks and now the leakage of examination papers – the ultimate blow to students and their parents who have worked relentlessly for months together to ensure that their children get past the burdensome education system with flying colours.
A question may be asked as to why India fails to get things right. Aren’t all the above maladies the affliction of banana republics run by tin-pot dictators? Isn’t a democracy more evolved in that governance must necessarily be a participatory activity? Evidently it isn’t! Some people at the top mess up and there are no checks and balances. In Meghalaya, a lot of noise is generated on account of the text books prescribed by the Meghalaya Board of School Education (MBOSE). The text books seem to have gone from bad to worse. The language is unreadable and one wonders how such books pass muster and who finally recommended such badly written, factually incorrect text books for our young students, many of whom are able to write much better English than the authors. Our education system is in shambles and has been so for a while now. Those teaching Mathematics are appalled at the exercises which they say will confound the students instead of making Mathematics a joy to learn. The Social Science text books too need comprehensive revision or must be completely trashed for the simple reason that the authors appear to have been politically motivated.
The fact that children of senior government officials and politicians do not study in the MBOSE schools is enough indication that they don’t give credence to what is taught in these schools. Is that why they dump the worst kind of books on students who are ill-fated to be under MBOSE?
