Friday 2 March 2018

DO NOT FAIL ANYONE FOREVER

Why do we say that? Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Let fishes swim, and let the birds fly. If one stream is not suitable another is. If one job is not suitable another is.

Assess the knowledge / Performance only
We think that everyone's assessment can be provided to them, without additional qualifications on the performance. Let the person, group, company, organization or educational institution decide their own criteria to take the individuals depending on their particular needs, at the time of selection.

A person going for a marketing position may have 70+ in languages, but 5 out of 100 in geography. That may be OK with the organization hiring him/her.

A student aspiring to be a mathematician may score 90+ in Mathematics and good marks in languages. However, if he scores poorly in Biology or History, it may not matter to the research institute hiring her/him.

Each institute, company or organization or even each MSME will have different criteria anyway - and the criteria will change for each stream or job they offer!

As we all know, scoring high marks have not been any great indicator of the achievements in later life, nor is it assuring the person to be a good human being.

Let us remove the stigma of a pass or fail - fail is very relative and in a very narrow sense - one can succeed in 100s of other things.

Also, we should allow students to repeat on their own volition and improve their marks / grades. It only bolsters the view of their preference to learn and prove themselves.

If someone scores 8 out of 100 in biology, but scores 80+ in other sciences, let him go into the appropriate science/ engineering stream. On the other hand if another scores 90+ in biology and has good language marks, the medical stream should be open for that person!

In our society, we are using arbitrary rules of pass-or-fail to "reduce" the list of candidates, to be able to handle the issue of heavy demand and low supply - be it in education or in jobs. The rules have become too arbitrary - an open Pandora's box - without any basis for the criteria set by various folks.

Let us just award the marks / grades. Let us not have arbitrary "standard criteria" across the board - at time of completion of any step. Let us leave the selection to the group that takes people in - to particular stream that the person aspires for.

Plethora of opportunities are available and the people should be able to enjoy learning and working on what they want to learn and perform.