GOA’S EDUCATION-2 By Valmiki Faleiro Goa’s myopic ‘Medium of Instruction Policy’ imparts primary school education in vernacular languages. Then suddenly switches to English at Std.V. The result: a 40% school dropout rate. This Sunday, let’s pan on those who survive that terribly flawed instruction system to reach a crucial academic level: pre-University. The last year of school (HSSC or Std. XII) is decisive in a student’s life. On it hangs his/her future. It will determine if s/he gets admission to studies in the dream profession. It will tell if s/he stands a chance at national entrance exams to any of India’s top centres of learning. In today’s Goa, it will even determine if s/he qualifies for admission to a conventional degree of choice – in Science, Commerce, Arts, or none. It’s bad enough that students in India have twelve long years at school evaluated in a few hours of ‘exams,’ under a system that encourages memorizing rather than thinking. It is infinitely worse that a Goan counterpart, even with superior memorizing skills, will end up poorly at the national level. Thanks to an abysmal standard of academic curricula right through the twelve years, crowned at Std. XII. An age ago, when higher secondary education was available to only a few, via the Portuguese Lyceum, Goans, far in proportion to their numbers, excelled academically in various fields. This happened outside Goa, naturally because of woeful facilities back home. But it demonstrated the innate intelligence of the Goan. Despite having given the world more than a fair share of Kashinath Mahales and Bailon de Sa’s, and having witnessed a tremendous spread of educational facilities post 1961, Goa produces mediocrity. This is the saddest part of the story, given Goa’s native talent. The system churns out second-rate pre-Univ products that are generally unfit for competitive exam admissions to professional studies in India. Most pre-Univs are thus forced to pursue a nondescript degree or at best a glorified post-graduate degree, both equally “useless-in-today’s-job-market.” No student passing through the portals of that joke called the Goa Higher Secondary Board, unless exceptionally talented and works far beyond the academic curriculum, can ever hope to succeed at any national level common entrance exam for professional courses, or, after graduation, at all-India competitive exams like of the Central Civil Services. (About the only recent case of a Goan student who did marvelously at a national exam, IITJEE – Indian Institutes of Technology Joint Entrance Exam – was an exceptionally gifted and hardworking Vasco lad. He studied at the town’s Kendriya Vidyalaya, which is affiliated to a central board, not the Goa Board.) One reason Goans excelled in the past was that their parents sacrificed much. For a good education, families resettled in places like Belgaum, Dharwar and Pune/Bombay. Just as enlightened parents would invest all they have, primarily, in the education of their children, so would an enlightened society, through its government. No government worth its salt would spare resources to provide the best possible educational facilities to its future citizenry. The pathetic reality of today implies that either Goa has lost its former enlightenment or that governance has been commandeered by a corrupt few who neither understand, nor would care about, this vital area. Goa’s education system needs a desperate overhaul. Incidentally, Government of India, in its quest to upgrade school education, hired a Brazil-born, Canada- and US-trained expert to improve the “Sarva Shikshya Abhiyan” of the HRD Ministry. Suzana Sales de Andrade is an ethnic Goan. If Goans have to progress in this competitive world, Goa Board’s syllabi must be upgraded to CBSE/ICSE standards, regarded the national norm. Personally, I would opt for standards of the IB (International Baccalaureate), the world norm. (“An icing without a cake,” chuckles my kid nephew who scored some 93% from Mumbai’s CBSE-affiliated Campion. “How can you aim at international standards when Goa’s are nowhere near national ones?”) Years before India’s PM Manmohan Singh spoke of Goa as “a centre of educational excellence,” a committee chaired by our own VA Pai Panandikar had, recognizing Goa’s potential, spoken on similar lines. That studied report must be gathering dust in some Secretariat crevice. Wish the PM realised his political party doesn’t have locally more than a bunch of brazen buffoons for the task. What more than political will and funds (which Goa certainly lacks not, the way crores are splurged on non-essentials) would it take for a total makeover, and give Young Goa its due? Instead, petty minds under a charade of nationalism, chasing a chimera of “culture,” squabble over scripts and insist on teaching kids in a language they don’t understand, via the Medium of Instruction. It could happen only in today’s Goa! (Concludes.) (ENDS) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ============================================================================== The above article appeared in the April 6, 2008 edition of the Herald, Goa
