Recently an
interesting incident occurred related to my school. One of my neighbors studies in 6th standard at my former school. I got
the news from one of our common acquaintance that he fared poorly in science
paper. Few days after I got the news, the boy himself started telling me about
his marks. He had got decent marks in rest of subjects. He initially did not
talk about science paper, but after a while he started the topic by informing
me that all the students got the beating in Science paper. He stressed on the
fact that even the topper had 30 marks out of 40. Since, I had seen his casual
approach during exams; I thought he himself was responsible for his dismal
performance. However, when he told about the way his teacher responded to the
students’ queries about the paper, it frustrated me a lot.
The teacher had told
all the students that if anyone comes to her for changing the marks, she would
cut that student’s marks. This according to me is ridiculous. As I had seen
these things happening while I was studying, this did not surprise me much. We
were pretty much helpless at that time (and even now). Now, let me be clear, I
am not saying all the students should get high marks or all student queries are
valid and mandate more marks. I just want teachers to give the students
understanding about why they lost marks. I know marks are not important in long
term, but they do matter on short term basis when it comes to maintain your
competitiveness. If you don’t get the marks or as I would call it – “results” –
for your efforts, next time you may not put the same level of efforts. Again,
how do you expect students to write the answers in the way it is expected, if
you never tell them what is expected from them?
I discussed this issue
with my friends, and they also had similar opinion. As I said earlier, scoring
high marks is not a priority, but you should at least get what you deserve or
at least a way to understand how to get better. I really hope situation
improves when my kids go to school.
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