By Glenn C. Kharkongor
Recently I came across two thought-provoking posts on my social media page. The first was a discussion on the NEET examination for medical admissions, and whether such tests demonstrate merit and social justice. Does intelligence equate to merit?
According to Dr KS Jacob, a professor of psychiatry at CMC, Vellore, “Psychometrically measured intelligence is only one of the many contributors to social outcomes. It accounts for less than a quarter of scholastic and occupational achievement. There is a realisation that social circumstances outweigh test scores in predicting future performance and that differences between racial and social groups are better explained by environmental variations”.
In 2019, a book by Michael Sandel, called “The Tyranny of Merit” challenged conventional definitions of merit. The book, based on extensive analyses of social and economic data, concludes that populist discontent, globalisation, misogyny, and racism emanate from a cherished idea of ‘merit’. After millennia of accessing the best education, jobs and wealth at the expense of the poor, the upper classes are in a dominant place, to ensure that their children end up being the most meritorious, thus embedding vast social inequalities between different classes.
Supreme Court has explained merit
Justice Krishna Iyer in a 1981 judgement said, “A sensitized heart and a vibrant head, tuned to the tears of the people, including its rural stretches and slum squalor, sincere dedication and intellectual integrity-these are some of the major components of merit. Candidates from the SC&ST who, from their birth, have had a traumatic understanding of the conditions of agrestic (rural, unpolished) India have more capability than those who have lived under affluent circumstances and are calIous to the human lot. Moreover, our examination system makes memory the master of merit”.
In 1985, Justice Chinnappa Reddy asked, “how an SC child, brought up in an atmosphere of penury, illiteracy and deprivation, who scores 40 per cent in a competitive exam, could be considered inferior to a child brought up in the lap of luxury, who studied in the most exclusive schools and colleges and got 70 or even 90 per cent.”
The Supreme Court in 2019, quoted: “Marc Galanter notes that three kinds of resources are necessary to produce results in competitive exams that qualify as indicators of merit. These are (a) economic resources for prior education, training, materials, freedom from work, etc.; (b) social and cultural resources such as networks of contacts, confidence, guidance and advice, information, etc.; and (c) intrinsic ability and hard work.”
Even equality of opportunity is not enough, said Justice Subba Rao. “Two horses are set down to run a race —one is a first-class race horse and the other an ordinary one. Both are made to run from the same starting point. Though theoretically they are given equal opportunity to run the race, in practice the ordinary horse is not given an equal opportunity to compete with the race horse. Centuries of calculated oppression and habitual submission reduced a considerable section of our community to a life of serfdom. They would not have any chance if they were made to enter the open field of competition without adventitious aids till such time when they could stand on their own legs.”
So even if a student gains access to a prestigious institution or career, he or she still faces difficult odds. In answer to a question in Parliament, the government reported that 63% of the dropouts at the IITs are from the reserved categories. The same is seen in the IIMs and AIIMS. Activists have long argued that those students face a higher level of pressure and discrimination at these institutions, but the stereotyped answer is that because they did not have academic merit in the first place, they could not cope with the high academic standards for passing.So having been given the opportunity for higher education in an elite institution, many still failed.
Failure: a terrible word
The other social media post came from an ex-teacher who said, “I have always felt that the word ‘fail’ conjures images of a wasted life; of someone who can never reach expected levels; a nobody at all…a kind of drop-out from life. The word “fail” truly needs to be replaced by a word that does not send one into depression. We often use words without thinking of the impact it might have on others. Words can build but they can also break us.”
The post elicited several responses which have been clubbed together: “As educators we ‘fail’ to see that the fish will never climb a tree…but our system is rigged to develop clones. ‘Fail’ has such a ring of finality. ‘Fail’ is a term that lowers the morale of a child. Some people are lucky enough to fail a stupid educational system and then to be free to chase their dreams, others are permanently damaged by it”.
There are two types of failure, and they are not the same. The first is failure to be promoted, in other words the student repeats the class, often losing a year. The second is failure to learn, even though the system may promote the student or even award a degree. The first type of failure can be removed by the government or a board. For example, some state education boards promote all students up to class 6, irrespective of student performance.
It is the second type of failure that should concern us more. But individual failure to learn is still under the radar, because most students manage to pass and any shortfall in one’s learning is carried over to the next level where this burden becomes cumulative. Given the differences in personality, interests, and motivation, reasons for failure to have adequately learned may vary from student to student. This type of failure is difficult to eliminate. Those that dropout are quickly forgotten.
There is also a difference in the effect on the student. It is well known that pupils who succeed in learning are more likely to pursue further learning than those who have failed. For those who have failed, it is not just academic failure, there are emotions of shame, guilt, and fear, and notions of family honour and stigma, leading to making excuses, finding blame, denial, anger, depression, dropout, and even suicide.
Dr Jacob, whom we quoted earlier goes on to say: “Pursuing a quest for knowledge, mastery of abstraction, self-discovery, development of creative and intellectually rigorous thinking and understanding practice are daunting tasks for those from less privileged backgrounds. While lowering university entrance grades may give them a leg-up, it throws them in the deep end. Young people who have succeeded against odds, sink into despair and feel intimidated by the confidence of their better-educated and privileged peers. Some stagger from examination to examination, increasingly demoralised.”
New research tells us that individuals learn more from success than failure. “It doesn’t feel good to fail, so people tune out”, according to Fishbach, a researcher from the University of Chicago. He adds, “Our society celebrates failure as a teachable moment, but a series of experiments found that failure did the opposite: It undermined learning.” In his experiments, participants learned less from failure than from success, even when learning was incentivized with rewards. It boils down to self-esteem: success builds self-esteem, failure lowers self-esteem, those with higher self-esteem learn better.
Still, society keeps telling people to learn from failures. There are many aphorisms and proverbs like “Failures are stepping stones to success”, but very few have made it on their own. Of those who fail, very few repeat. Of those who repeat, very few pass. In most cases, failure begets more failure.
The academic system needs to provide individualised teaching-learning and better career pathways and many students need individual counselling and mentoring.Recently I came across two thought-provoking posts on my social media page. The first was a discussion on the NEET examination for medical admissions, and whether such tests demonstrate merit and social justice. Does intelligence equate to merit?
According to Dr KS Jacob, a professor of psychiatry at CMC, Vellore, “Psychometrically measured intelligence is only one of the many contributors to social outcomes. It accounts for less than a quarter of scholastic and occupational achievement. There is a realisation that social circumstances outweigh test scores in predicting future performance and that differences between racial and social groups are better explained by environmental variations”.
In 2019, a book by Michael Sandel, called “The Tyranny of Merit” challenged conventional definitions of merit. The book, based on extensive analyses of social and economic data, concludes that populist discontent, globalisation, misogyny, and racism emanate from a cherished idea of ‘merit’. After millennia of accessing the best education, jobs and wealth at the expense of the poor, the upper classes are in a dominant place, to ensure that their children end up being the most meritorious, thus embedding vast social inequalities between different classes.
Supreme Court has
explained merit
Justice Krishna Iyer in a 1981 judgement said, “A sensitized heart and a vibrant head, tuned to the tears of the people, including its rural stretches and slum squalor, sincere dedication and intellectual integrity-these are some of the major components of merit. Candidates from the SC&ST who, from their birth, have had a traumatic understanding of the conditions of agrestic (rural, unpolished) India have more capability than those who have lived under affluent circumstances and are calIous to the human lot. Moreover, our examination system makes memory the master of merit”.
In 1985, Justice Chinnappa Reddy asked, “how an SC child, brought up in an atmosphere of penury, illiteracy and deprivation, who scores 40 per cent in a competitive exam, could be considered inferior to a child brought up in the lap of luxury, who studied in the most exclusive schools and colleges and got 70 or even 90 per cent.”
The Supreme Court in 2019, quoted: “Marc Galanter notes that three kinds of resources are necessary to produce results in competitive exams that qualify as indicators of merit. These are (a) economic resources for prior education, training, materials, freedom from work, etc.; (b) social and cultural resources such as networks of contacts, confidence, guidance and advice, information, etc.; and (c) intrinsic ability and hard work.”
Even equality of opportunity is not enough, said Justice Subba Rao. “Two horses are set down to run a race —one is a first-class race horse and the other an ordinary one. Both are made to run from the same starting point. Though theoretically they are given equal opportunity to run the race, in practice the ordinary horse is not given an equal opportunity to compete with the race horse. Centuries of calculated oppression and habitual submission reduced a considerable section of our community to a life of serfdom. They would not have any chance if they were made to enter the open field of competition without adventitious aids till such time when they could stand on their own legs.”
So even if a student gains access to a prestigious institution or career, he or she still faces difficult odds. In answer to a question in Parliament, the government reported that 63% of the dropouts at the IITs are from the reserved categories. The same is seen in the IIMs and AIIMS. Activists have long argued that those students face a higher level of pressure and discrimination at these institutions, but the stereotyped answer is that because they did not have academic merit in the first place, they could not cope with the high academic standards for passing.So having been given the opportunity for higher education in an elite institution, many still failed.
Failure: a terrible word
The other social media post came from an ex-teacher who said, “I have always felt that the word ‘fail’ conjures images of a wasted life; of someone who can never reach expected levels; a nobody at all…a kind of drop-out from life. The word “fail” truly needs to be replaced by a word that does not send one into depression. We often use words without thinking of the impact it might have on others. Words can build but they can also break us.”
The post elicited several responses which have been clubbed together: “As educators we ‘fail’ to see that the fish will never climb a tree…but our system is rigged to develop clones. ‘Fail’ has such a ring of finality. ‘Fail’ is a term that lowers the morale of a child. Some people are lucky enough to fail a stupid educational system and then to be free to chase their dreams, others are permanently damaged by it”.
There are two types of failure, and they are not the same. The first is failure to be promoted, in other words the student repeats the class, often losing a year. The second is failure to learn, even though the system may promote the student or even award a degree. The first type of failure can be removed by the government or a board. For example, some state education boards promote all students up to class 6, irrespective of student performance.
It is the second type of failure that should concern us more. But individual failure to learn is still under the radar, because most students manage to pass and any shortfall in one’s learning is carried over to the next level where this burden becomes cumulative. Given the differences in personality, interests, and motivation, reasons for failure to have adequately learned may vary from student to student. This type of failure is difficult to eliminate. Those that dropout are quickly forgotten.
There is also a difference in the effect on the student. It is well known that pupils who succeed in learning are more likely to pursue further learning than those who have failed. For those who have failed, it is not just academic failure, there are emotions of shame, guilt, and fear, and notions of family honour and stigma, leading to making excuses, finding blame, denial, anger, depression, dropout, and even suicide.
Dr Jacob, whom we quoted earlier goes on to say: “Pursuing a quest for knowledge, mastery of abstraction, self-discovery, development of creative and intellectually rigorous thinking and understanding practice are daunting tasks for those from less privileged backgrounds. While lowering university entrance grades may give them a leg-up, it throws them in the deep end. Young people who have succeeded against odds, sink into despair and feel intimidated by the confidence of their better-educated and privileged peers. Some stagger from examination to examination, increasingly demoralised.”
New research tells us that individuals learn more from success than failure. “It doesn’t feel good to fail, so people tune out”, according to Fishbach, a researcher from the University of Chicago. He adds, “Our society celebrates failure as a teachable moment, but a series of experiments found that failure did the opposite: It undermined learning.” In his experiments, participants learned less from failure than from success, even when learning was incentivized with rewards. It boils down to self-esteem: success builds self-esteem, failure lowers self-esteem, those with higher self-esteem learn better.
Still, society keeps telling people to learn from failures. There are many aphorisms and proverbs like “Failures are stepping stones to success”, but very few have made it on their own. Of those who fail, very few repeat. Of those who repeat, very few pass. In most cases, failure begets more failure.
The academic system needs to provide individualised teaching-learning and better career pathways and many students need individual counselling and mentoring.