On education: Evaluation system and politics in secondry education

In this blog I intend to cover following topics:
1. An alternative evaluation system
2. Few suggestions in secondary education


In the modern times education is becoming over competitive. The process requires us to compete with each other and out do each other. And this aspect of doing better than other instead of exploring our own competitive eadge has often been disturbing for me. And I often think what can be alternative to the evaluation system which most of univesities follow at the moment. Following line from the speech forwarded to me by one of my friend gave me my Eurka moment:

"You should never try to be better then some one else"

Thats what the evaluation process in our colleges and schools teaches us today. We are always asked to work hard to get better marks then others to achieve higher grades. Its difficult for me to believe how two different people with different personalities can be judged thoroughly in this system.

In the common platform of grading, we are pushed to better the others then to achieve our best. Also, I believe the common platform prompt us to look at the best and they way she/he does, instead of how I would like do to, till what extend I would like to achieve. I mean in common platform "sucess" could be till the best not till you want it to be.

If at the end of the day I judge myself with myself at the begining of the day, it would be a better evaluation of my performance at the end of the day. Like in our education if for a samester of 4 months I take 4 exams each new exam consisting of questions from previous exams + some more questions. We can do evaluation something like following, I have not put any calculation but a system can be evolved where a person is judged completely on its own performance over the time.

1: 10 10 10 10 : AA
2: 10 8 7 6 : BB
3: 6 7 8 10 : AA
4: 7 7 7 7 : BB
5: 10 6 10 8 : AB

Above a person whoes performance is dipped over the time ended up is getting lower grade then the one whose performance is increased even if sum total is same. And person whoes perfomance has improved over the time is the most benificial.

I had written before on education changes we would need mostly in primary and secondry. I have one more point to add.

An obligatory course on political structure of country. Which should cover the political history of India, the history of political parties till present and different political thoughts in country and world. Why it is important to have this course? Since the age of voting is 18 year which is the age when we come out of school. At this point in the absence of any significant exposure to political structure, our thoughts are completely biased by the family and parents. Which can be harmfull for a successful democracy. Alternate to this voting age can be made to 20 or 21 years.