Thank You, Professor Yash Pal!

“My daughter has come first in the whole district in the tenth standard board exams,” my English teacher boasted in our class. I retorted to my friend Gopi “No wonder. After all he didn’t teach her.” Parents want their children to be Number One either because they were Number One in their times or they weren’t Number One in their times. Newspapers show the Number One celebrating his or her (mostly her) success with their parents or friends.

In the background, schools dump the mostly irrelevant and unpractical concepts into the young minds, eating the time which the children should have been playing or having some kind of fun. As a CBSE student, I used to boast “our syllabus is tougher than state board syllabus. Getting 350 out of 500 there is like getting 450 here.”

With students easily crossing the 400 mark and now the 450 mark, more stress has been put on presentation of answers, optimal choice of questions, and other intricacies. Eventually, I gave up my ambition of becoming a teacher. Practically, I’d have been a facilitator, bullying students all day‘Each mark is important. Each second counts. The Board Exam is your life. Don’t repent later.’ Being a teacher, I’d have ended up teaching nothing, which I’m doing right now.

Talking about education sector reform is fun. But implementation isn’t. When the nation builders are ready to implement the sixth pay commission recommendations with immediate effect, they cite bureaucratic bottlenecks in implementing reforms, or even mild changes. And the reform committees and enquiry commissions in this country work in their own way. Hence they take their own time. Take the Liberhan Commission for instance. Set up in December 1992, the retired judge took 16 years, 48 extensions, and 399 sittings to submit his report. And what the hell is it going to tell? The whole nation witnessed what happened, who laughed, who cried, who never laughed, who did everything, and who did nothing.

The review committee on the National Curriculum Framework, headed by Prof. Yash Pal, has been comparatively efficient and faster. It took only 3 years to submit the report.

Professor Yash Pal, the great Indian Scientist who brought Science to the common man’s drawing room through Turning Point in Doordarshan, has come up with his remarkable and revolutionary recommendations. The main recommendation is the making the Standard X public exam optional.

Another recommendation is the formation of a centralized and more autonomous body on the lines of the Election Commission to replace the time-tested and failed bodies such as UGC, AICTE, and NCTE.

Talented and deserving people are being put into nation building – for example Nandan Nilekani in the Unique ID project. Good sings. Thanks, Professor Yash. At least kids will have the relief that they don’t have to be the ‘State Number One’ and ‘District Number One’ until Standard XII now.