Thursday, June 14, 2012

What a depressing atitude - you are encouraging corruption in the school system

The following comment both depressed me and made me angry:
“By giving 40 per cent weightage to school marks, you are encouraging corruption in the school system. Already there’s rampant cheating in state board exams. Once you agree weightage for school marks, you open the doors for the rich and the powerful to manipulate the system to their wards’ advantage. You open doors for corruption and bribery,” said Prof YN Singh of IIT Kanpur, who attended the meeting.

Is it not equivalent to saying that all the virtue is in IIT's and rest are corrupt or corruptible. "You are not special" applies even more to IIT's than to Wellesley High School.

As it is, most people in India are extremely uncomfortable with decentralization. The conviction is that if teachers set and correct papers, it is bound to create pressures of the type mentioned in the quote above. Yet, IIT's do follow that practice and the results demonstrate that its outcome is far better than the alternates.

In reality, IIT education is not particularly important for the elite and powerful. It is the rest to whom it matters. Children of rich kids have to work very-very hard to lose their advantage. Rich get richer. They have the option of studying anywhere in the world. Why would they resort to petty bribery of petty people?

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