SCOPE of the Problem

Dear dedicated reader,

The entrenched hold which cheating has on this country’s educational system is much deeper than I ever would have suspected. Needless to say, this most recent item completely shocked me:

Some background first: The Government of Gujarat has undertaken to sponsor a specific English curriculum which they hope will enhance the English skills of the students and teachers who study with it. It is called SCOPE for short, though at the moment I cannot for the life of me remember what it stands for. It’s originally a Cambridge based curriculum and it shows in all the cultural relevancy that its materials have for students in rural India. The English teachers at Kadod High School take turns teaching it in the mornings at the same time as my Integrated English-Technology class and more than once have they shyly knocked on the computer lab door in need of some help with an exercise that is beyond their cultural comprehension.

For example: Match the following people with their dates of death: a) Charlie Chaplin b) Queen Elizabeth c) Pablo Picasso d) Beowulf. The respective dates of death follow.

I know my students immediately see the relevancy of this exercise to learning English in their own lives.

Irregardless, the principal was very anxious to start the program at Kadod High School and our Foundation is helping to sponsor part of the students’ tuition in taking the program. Many students who could afford to pay the other half of the tuition were anxious to do so and many teachers were taking studying for the exam very seriously. Why, do you ask?

The benefit of participating in the government scheme as opposed to private English classes is that, of course, it helps future prospects. If I understand the system correctly, teachers in government schools are not hired on the merit of their teaching, their interview responses, or any other standard measure which we use in the US. Rather, because government school teaching positions are government jobs, they are governed by the same crazy system that governs the hiring of any other government employee. Therefore, schools look at your marks from your B.A. and B.Ed, your masters if applicable, and all of these are translated into certain numbers of points. These points determine if you are first, second, third etc for your pick of teaching jobs at different schools.

Now, extra points can be earned in a number of seemingly random ways: 1) participation in the National Cadet Corps (a band of students akin to the Boy Scouts who march in procession for Independence Day, Diwali and a number of other functions throughout the year) during your high school years. 2) Taking a government sponsored exam, such as that given in the SCOPE curriculum to prove your proficiency in English.

With this in mind, many of the temporary teachers (teachers hired to fill vacant permanent positions on a yearly basis) were anxious to take the school sponsored opportunity to take the exam and the principal called on us to tutor these teachers in preparation. Melissa and I sat in the staff room and tried to encourage these teachers to speak English as much as possible in the hopes that it would allow them to pass the exam, which took place last Sunday.

On coming into the staff room this morning, I was interested to hear how the exam had gone from one teacher we had worked with very often.

“How was the test?” I asked, innocently enough.

“Oh, it was fine,” was the reply. “We all ended up copying off of Sejalben’s paper.”

“Come again?”

If this is the attitude of the teachers, how can we expect any more of the students?

Best,
Cat