interfere with my education. and when it is a question of exams…
Mumbai Mirror gave six Class XII toppers a simple GK test. Most of them didn’t even come close to getting a first-class – and so the newspaper calls them rather cruelly, floppers in its cover story of Friday June 13th.
The questions we posed to them were based on common knowledge that any educated citizen should have. But most of them got less than 50% marks in our test. The overall HSC topper, Priyanka Shah, who had got 96.59% in the Board exams, in fact got 36% marks in the GK test, and one of the CBSE toppers got just 27%.
On this article which goes on to attack the “mugging-culture” in the education system, a commentor has this to say – “You have infront of you, your whole life, to get your General Knowlege ripe. You did the right thing by concentrating on the studies. You can pick up newspapers anytime and improve your general knowledge throughout your life. There is no need to feel any sense of incompleteness or a lack of confidence on that”. Concentrating on studies is one thing – but to the exclusion of everything else?
And as an aside, also this – which I found myself agreeing with – Please don’t call them flopper and that too on the front page of a leading daily. I am very sure if similar kind of test is conducted for your newspaper staff you guys won’t be able to score anything near to what these kids scored.
I guess it’s all the pressure to do well academically. When every percentage point (or one-hundredth of it) matters, kids are not going to grow up well rounded (except physically, in the absence of exercise 😛 ).
I also have strong objections to labeling people “loser” and “flopper”, and with our general attitude that success is everything, and people who fail are somehow beneath notice. Today’s “losers” may be tomorrow’s winners.
That is outrageous… not just downplaying their achievement but even ridiculing them!! Next I wonder what?? “So what if boys don’t make it to the HSC toppers list… they score higher on GK???” (…going by their GK scores in this one). Also I noticed they haven’t put up this GK test questions. What were these questions that got them labeled ‘floppers’??
Agree completely…
No offense meant. But I think it’s the newspapers that are full of shit.
LOL. No worries. They will go to america in a few years time.
I knew comments to this post would be interesting 🙂
these were questions like – who is the President of India? and what is an SEZ? and who is the Democratic Part candidate for the US elections? and so on…
I think the report brings to light what we all suspected or knew anyway – that the “system” (such as it is) does not let kids focus on anything but the nearest exam – point taken, Mumbai Mirror – but I did object to the use of the headline ‘floppers’
True, quite a few ‘brilliant’ students would fall into this category. But its quite
a debate whether non-performers in academics are in any way better. From
my observation, there are quite a few who are brilliant students and would also
be able to answer questions such as these rather easily. Its overblowing the
issue.
Sathej
The question of “Mugging Culture” is very much true. The problem is Indian parents dont care beyond the percentage of marks scored. The percentage is the ultimate result in their point of view. Because they dont have any other way of testing their childs education levels. And this continues with most people on the jobs too. They want the jobs with the maximum salaries. Forget the kind of job they are doing and skills required to do them. Is there any difference between these people and people who wanted secure government jobs. “Nothing changes. It only takes a different form” is an apt explanation.
Destination Infinity.