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Classes, classes everywhere, not a stop to think

Some trumpet blowing, to start this column. When I finished school, back during the Ice Ages, I got a Government of India merit award for finishing in the top 500, nationwide, in the school-leaving examination. While you pause to applaud me, I shall go on to tell you something else. It positively astonishes me that had I done that exam today, my performance would not have put me in the top 5,000, let alone the top 500. I came home with a shade below 80%, a mark I was inordinately proud of. Then, it was enough to get me into a respected engineering college in Rajasthan.

Now, 80% would be less than mediocre. Saddled with it, I'd be hard pressed to get into any engineering college, any college at all.

What's even more interesting about my score is that I got it without enrolling in any tuition classes. I say this not to get you to applaud some more, but to point out that in the Ice Ages, there were no tuition classes to speak of. That last year, I went to school, yawned through the classes there, studied at home with some energetic encouragement from my mother, did the exams at the end of the year. Most of my classmates spent the year in more or less the same way.

That description sounds almost laughable today. Two weeks ago, a teenager in Ahmedabad called Chirag told me how he is getting ready for his 12th standard exams. He goes to school ("college" actually, but it's the same thing) daily, but only to hang out in the cafeteria. Nobody attends any classes there. In the afternoons, he heads for tuition classes. They go on till 8 pm, covering every subject in his curriculum. This afternoon and evening regimen wends its martial way through the year, vacation or no vacation, until the exams come around.

And after he's done with them, Chirag will probably want to sign up for more tuition classes, this time for various college entrance exams.

There have been two great changes since the Ice Ages. First, marks in the school-leaving exams have inflated to near the limit. Second, schools matter very little today. The real preparation for the exam goes on in the tuition racket... sorry, I mean the tuition classes.

No, I do mean tuition racket. Chirag's father shelled out Rs 50,000 (fifty thousand rupees only) for the privilege of tuitions for this child. Now that may be at the upper end of the scale, for this tutor takes just three or four kids at a time. Still, larger classes are not a whole lot cheaper. Chate's Coaching Classes, whose recent multicoloured ad I have here, has "only 30 students in each batch; individual attention to students." From each child who signs up for such "individual attention" to "30 students", Chate wants Rs 35,000 (thirty-five thousand rupees only).

Even in these days of liberalisation and rising incomes, these are not small sums of money that everybody and his co-brother can afford. The people who run these classes know this well. Chate's makes few bones about whom they are aiming at: their classes are for the "elite Mumbaikar", says another of their ads.

On the face of it, nothing wrong with that. If the elite Mumbaikar wants to send young Kanakadurga along to coaching classes, paying tens of thousands of rupees to do so, good luck to her. And even if these are prices that not everybody can pay, the elite is still numerous enough that tuition classes seem to be enormously profitable. That's one of those perplexing things about India.

But dig a little more with me, if you will. See, there's a reason Chirag does not attend classes in his school in Ahmedabad: it's a waste of his time. His teachers there are entirely indifferent to their teaching jobs, for they are all otherwise -- and more lucratively -- employed. In coaching classes. They make it known to the students that if they want to "learn" anything -- to be read as "have any chance in the exams" -- they would do well to join said coaching classes. That's where the real teaching will be done, problems will be solved, notes will be handed out.

And in school? Well, they have tasty samosas in the cafeteria, at any rate.

Things are much the same in aamchi Mumbai. So young Kanakadurga is left with little choice. It's this simple: if she sticks with school, she will not learn what she needs for the exam. To have any hope of piling up the near-100% scores which are her only ticket to college admission, she has to sign up with Chate's, or Mrs Agarwal's, or Anurag's classes. Her family has to pay those fat fees.

And what if her family -- like most families in India -- cannot afford them? It's just as simple: she has to stick with school. Given her teachers's tutelary preoccupations that nobody seems keen to crack down on, she will not learn what she needs for the exam -- not from them, at least. Her hopes for those high scores, for college admissions, perhaps even for a later step up in the world, must be scaled down to essentially nil. Voila -- we have yet one more way the poor pay for being poor.

While they do that, the elite pay for their classes. But you have to wonder what they are really paying for. With that Rs 50,000, Chirag has signed away all his evenings for the rest of this year. Mrs Agarwal's 12th standard classes run for two hours every morning; her 8th standard classes (yes, 8th standard kiddies take tuitions) for two hours every evening. Chate's ad lists the outfit's "Salient Features." They include "untiring toil on the part of both, students and teachers."

"Untiring toil"? These children will spend a minimum of two hours a day for four years on the "untiring toil" of tuitions, trying to learn what their teachers are paid to teach them anyway in the school they also go to, and this is to be thought of as a virtue? We blithely take away their leisure time and this is a "Salient Feature"? What is this whole system turning out, people or robots? What's that about all work and no play?

All this, and we've come full circle here, to push marks as close to 100% as possible. The good news is -- I think it is, maybe it is -- that such grades are getting commoner and commoner. Chate's ad, once more, tells me so. It has a long list of prizes Chate will give people who do well in the 10th and 12th standard exams. If Kanakadurga stands first in the "Divisional General Merit List" in the 10th, she will get Rs 51,000; in the 12th, Rs 101,000. Second or third, Rs 35,000 in the 10th; Rs 75,000 in the 12th. (All figures, by the way, which by themselves should tell you how well Chate is earning).

There are more prizes on that list. If in the 12th, Kanakadurga gets 100% in the "PCB or PCM group" (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Math), she gets Rs 50,000; if a measly 99%, a measly Rs 10,000.

In the 10th, neither 99 nor 100 merits a prize.

Think about this for a moment. Chate thinks so many students will get 99+ scores in the 10th that they're not worth offering a prize for. Not only that, what amazes me is that there are various 10th standard exam-related achievements that rank higher than getting 100% in the PCB/PCM group. Including being a "subject topper" (Rs 10,000).

How, I'm longing to know, is it possible to get 100% in PCB and NOT top those subjects?

To answer that, I think there's no option but to sign up for coaching classes myself. Which I don't mind, because Chate's ad also tells me: "Correct guidance, well planned and consistent hard work lead to a bright future!"

Bright future, maybe. Dull boy? Never mind.

Tailpiece:

In my last column, I offered a sampling of excerpts from news about the Srikrishna Commission report. In this tailpiece, which I shall try to make a weekly feature, two more:

"State Chief Minister Manohar Joshi and Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde called on Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi on Saturday and requested him to promulgate an ordinance putting off the report's release in view of its 'sensitive' contents."
Times of India, April 6 1998.

"Manohar Joshi is believed to have asked Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee ... for amendments in the Commission of Inquiry Act of 1952 which will enable the state government to table the [report] without an Action Taken Report. ... Highly places sources said that the Sena is insisting [on] such an amendment as it will spare the state government from taking action against its own party bosses and cadres who are believed to have been censured in the Commission's report. ... Sources said that Mr Joshi realizes that the ATR has become an albatross round his neck as it will require him to proceed against his own party bosses."
Asian Age, April 6 1998.

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