\u201cWhy did you give too many As?\u201d Growled the HOD of my university at an\nacademic who had awarded As to most of the students of our class. The teacher,\na true scholar with a command over his subjects, knew how to keep the students\ncaptivated in the class, and importantly engaged in the subject. \u201cLet the\nstudents be duly rewarded for their efforts,\u201d he chimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same university, another teacher\nshared with us the anecdote of a teacher of the university of Punjab (known for\nnotoriously austere marking) who gave 47\/100 marks to an exceptionally well attempted\npaper of romantic poetry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having graduated, I chanced to do marking at\nFederal Board at secondary level. Ambitious and groomed by the philosophy of\nawarding marks, I awarded 89\/100 to a student whose diction, sentence structure\nand handwriting was simply exquisite. When the news reverberated through the hall,\nwhere the centralised marking was being carried out, many whispers emanated in\nutter disbelief. In fact many questioned my marking criterion. Even most of examiners in the hall might not be\nable to attempt paper of that quality, was my response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In succeeding years, I got the opportunity\nto serve at various elite schools of Islamabad and a couple of universities, as\na language teacher. There I found a pervasive approach to keep marking\nstringent. Infrequently, the teachers\nwould argue that in language one cannot score or give full or near full marks. Not\nsurprisingly, I would find the notebooks and scripts of students daubed with\ncrosses, circles and underlines. Ironically, no one would practically teach the\nhapless learners how to improve a certain area, though they would hammer them\nwith marathon lectures, using the gimmickry of language, perhaps to overawe them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why are teachers not willing to give grades\nto those who really deserve them? Does our education system not promote the spirit\nof encouraging pupils? Is it the sense of complexity to\nwhich holds teachers\u2019 hands while awarding marks? These were the questions\nwhich would haunt me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then,came a moment of reckoning, which\naddressed my curiosity, changed my entire outlook to teaching. During a webinar\nworkshop, a renowned UK based academic, while answering a question to a teacher from Pakistan as regards how to\n\u2018penalise\u2019 a student if s(he) exceeds the word limit, she asserted \u2018no, no, no\u2019, we\ndon\u2019t penalise the students ,we award them with grades.\u2019 This is not mere a\nsentence, it is a complete philosophy, a holistic approach towards teaching, I\nmurmured. My all queries had been slacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And my belief strengthened when observed that\nstudents who barely get Ds and Cs in the internal exams get higher grades at\nthe CIE and Edexcel. They award them with grades, not penalise them (unlike a\npredominant majority of language teachers in Pakistan tend to do and feel proud\nas well) would flash through my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortune favoured at me a few days ago yet\nagain when the same academic from the Cambridge Board came to Islamabad train\nteachers. At the very outset of workshop, she remarked that \u2018penalisation\u2019 was\nnot in her dictionary. Furthermore, she mentioned that examiners mark what they\nsee. Following it, she asked teachers to mark some of scripts of the students.\nNot unexpectedly, many of the teachers chose to be a little too frugal to give\nmarks. Smiling, she asked the teachers to justify their marking; which they found\nhard to. To utter surprise to many, she showed some marked scripts that marked\nthe correct points only while ignoring incorrect ones. Beaming, she pointed out\nthat highlighting–positive strategy motivates the students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These were the instances from capital. And one\ncan gauge the conditions in other parts of country. The students are often\nfound complaining for a drop down in their overall GPA or percentage, because\nof less marks in language or courses related to language. Sometimes they\ngrumble at favouritism or disliking of a particular teacher, especially in\nsemester system.\n\nWithout any doubt, I\nam not advancing the idea of overly generous marking, for it would dent already dwindling quality and credence of our\neducation system. But I would certainly urge language teachers to revisit and\nreinvigorate their teaching so as to make the students well equipped with up-to-date language and shed of the propensity of depriving them of their due grades.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWhy did you give too many As?\u201d Growled the HOD of my university at an academic who had awarded As to most of the students of our class. The teacher, a true scholar with a command over his subjects, knew how to keep the students captivated in the class, and importantly engaged in the subject. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54,"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sliklight.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}