Erring teachers to be penalized

The Gujarat Education Department has decided to take strict action against over 2300 school teachers who were appointed as evaluators for Class X Board exam. (https://indianexpress.com/article/education/higher-fine-gujarat-education-ministers-rebuke-in-store-for-2300-teachers-who-erred-in-giving-marks-5225039/) This is after the Department was appalled by the kind of mistakes the teachers were found to have committed while evaluating the exam papers. Some of these, as stated by the Department, include errors ranging from simple addition, omitting decimal to even awarding marks higher than the total marks for the paper. As reported by Indian Express, apart from a higher than before fine amount, these teachers are also set to be personally reprimanded by the Education Minister of Gujarat, Shri Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, who shall also, however, grant them a hearing before taking ‘appropriate’ action against them. It is further felt by the Minister and the Department that mere fines are not punishment enough for such egregious errors of commission and omission.

All of this sounds very reasonable. The kind of errors mentioned above seem to be too basic to have been committed by school teachers and thus an initial opinion about the utmost lack of responsibility, or ability, or the sheer carelessness and casual attitude on part of the teachers may well be formed. The proposal of the government to hand out strict punishments to such errant teachers may also not seem unreasonable.

However, when such incidents come to light, it is also essential to look past the immediate issue and follow it with a knee-jerk reaction. Instead, it is necessary to try and arrive at the underlying reasons and the long-term remedial measures so that such incidents can be altogether avoided in the future. On the surface, such incidents, may seem to be a result of a lack of commitment on the part of the teachers and hence an attitudinal problem with them. But if we will try and look even a bit deeper, we will ourselves realize the flaws in the above argument.

The number of teachers who have been identified to have made these errors is around 2300, which is by no means a small number. And this excludes the teachers who have made minor errors. I think it will be agreeable to all that such type of errors cannot be attributed to a lack of ability on the part of teachers. If that is ruled out, then next comes the question of their attitude towards work. I believe that 2300 is again a huge number to attribute the errors to the general careless attitude of the teachers. There is no reason to believe that such huge number of teachers would not take the work assigned to them seriously and hence end up committing such basic errors. What can then explain the situation?

It might be pertinent here to go to the root cause of the problem. Such an analysis will lead us to the long-present structural problems in our education system and the role of teachers within it. Time and again it has been highlighted that for the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process, it is essential that teachers are accorded their rightful place in the education system. Henry Giroux has very rightly advocated for teachers to be considered as ‘transformative intellectuals’. Yet, our education system treats them in the shabbiest of manners possible. They are considered as lowermost wrung of administrators whose job is to impart the prescribed curriculum, along with discharging the multifarious other administrative responsibilities thrust upon them. The trainings, if any, provided to them are abysmal. In such a scenario, the general motivation levels and a sense of pride in work cannot be expected to be particularly high.

In the abovementioned scenario, although one may agree that committing of the kind of errors that have been listed is not acceptable by qualified school teachers, however, the resolution of the problem, should avoid yielding to knee-jerk reactions and piece-meal solutions. Instead, attention needs to be focused on addressing the structural issues inherent in our education system. As much as it is the responsibility of teachers to perform their duties diligently, it as an equal responsibility of the system to ensure that they are able to do so, to the best of their abilities, by creating enabling conditions and infrastructure for them to do so. Anything short of this, is not going to yield any result.