Depending on their temperaments and backgrounds, ‘Wow!’ or ‘You must be joking!’ are two common ways people are likely to react if you tell them the SSC and HSSC results of any given year. For each year, the ‘topper’ invariably scores 98% or more on aggregate; others (separated merely by fractions of a percentage) following closely on his heels, with numerous students ending up with 95% or more. This is the story of all boards of secondary-school education across the country. Of course, one can be shocked only so many times: those who have had occasion to be involved in the university admission process (their own or a dear one’s) know that such high percentages are fairly commonplace.
There is no denying that some of the kids appearing for these exams are exceptionally gifted. Add to it the awareness levels being what they are these days, and the fact that many of them manage to put in consistent, well-directed effort into their studies, and it should be no surprise if it results in a 100 out of 100 in something purely logical like mathematics. In subjects such as chemistry and physics as well, if the exam papers are shorn of all theory (although there is much to be said against the quality of such kind of evaluation), one can still understand how somebody could score 95% or more. But 98% in languages, Islamic Studies and Pakistan Studies! That is beyond comprehension; and it is obvious that something somewhere is seriously wrong.
Languages and descriptive subjects are supposed to test an examinee not only regarding facts and the correctness of any information in his responses but also on how well he expresses himself; the grammatical and rhetorical competence on display; the skill demonstrated in argumentation; and the syntax of the language employed. Even if one assumes that all answers are ‘correct’, a 98% means that the syntax is all but perfect and the expression could not have been any better. Surely, unless these candidates are all William Shakespeares and Bertrand Russells, this makes no sense at all. One need not be more than an interested bystander to realize that much.
If I may say so myself, my own observations on the issue are anything but those coming from a mere bystander. I have had the pleasure (or displeasure) of teaching the best products the country’s high-schools system has to offer for more than twelve years now. For most of that period, my students were brilliant enough to have made it to the most sought-after engineering discipline in the country, which required being placed at the very top of the merit list. Believe me, and I take no glee in saying it, quite far from there being no room for improvement in the students’ written expression, most of them (including those who are extremely adept at math and numbers) cannot write even one paragraph without making the reader cringe. They have no clue how to start, how to put one thought on top of another, where to end the sentence and start a new one, and where the shift in thought warrants a new paragraph. They do not even know how to punctuate a sentence.
Leaving skills of rhetoric and composition aside for a moment, all one needs in order to learn the basic syntax of any language is to carefully read a few books. But therein lies the rub: Nobody (including the ‘best’ student) is willing to read anything anymore. The results seldom fail to amuse: spaces before periods and commas, arbitrary capitalizing of letters in a sentence, sentences without an end in sight, one sentence merging into another without any warning whatsoever, the subject suddenly metamorphosing into the object, the voice changing from active to passive (and back) inside the same sentence, and so on. I therefore find it impossible to accept that these kids have reached the pinnacle of powers of expression and composition, which an unsuspecting person would be forgiven for assuming based on their grades in languages, religious and social studies.
Although they manage to make it into the top universities, our high school stars are fully aware of this shortcoming on their part. University instructors may insist all they want that they must hand in their original writings, but they are apt to invariably turn to the internet to get the dreaded task over with. This is admission of their conviction that they will not be able to do it no matter how hard they try. Most of our high school graduates would rather die than write a page of original prose, and more often than not they do. This is the context in which the 98% results need to be seen.
Here, I am reminded of an unresolved puzzle that is somewhat related to the topic at hand. Will you, reader, be good enough to demystify it for me? I was negligent enough not to do the ‘done’ thing by enrolling my son in school at the ripe age of two. Actually, it was not carelessness but my belief that two-years-old was too young an age for any child to be away from home for so many hours at a stretch. Two and a half years later, when I finally started looking around for schools, I had some interesting conversations with ladies managing admissions at the various establishments. The common ‘concern’ was that, having missed two grades – Playgroup (PG) and Kindergarten (KG) – he would not be able to cope with the rigours of studies of Prep. It was explained to me that the toddlers were supposed to know this-many number of words by the time they entered Grade 1, where they would start making simple sentences; so that come Grade 2, they were well equipped to step into the exciting world of simple composition. I told more than one of the principals that the learning trajectory they were outlining was most impressive but it had left me perplexed because when these whiz-kids, these masters of exposition, arrived as freshmen years later at the university, they seemed to have mysteriously forgotten all the composition skills they had mastered all those years ago in their primary years. None of the lady principals happened to have the answer to the riddle. I would greatly appreciate it if any of my readers has.
