If the recently introduced Right to Education Bill becomes law in India, both the private and government schools will not be allowed to force a child to repeat a year or expel students until class VIII for any reason. But the trend which is continuing now a days is the trend of pass and fail by identifying the children as best and worst. Though Child psychology says that ‘every child is a unique one', somehow due to some circumstances of child, he/she becomes unable to produce good result. But, instead of discovering the qualities or uniqueness within the child, if the school authority and teachers try to fail the child or expel him/her from the school then is it the correct way to deal with the child? Should a child be failed or expelled from the school?

Since the time immemorial the educationists say about trapping of hidden talent within every child. All children are not same in their potent. Their potentialities must be checked and they have to be trained on that line. But it is very sorrow to say that after many years of independence also our country has not able to produce that kind of education pattern. Now the question in front of us is ‘should we proceed to expel the child at a random by simply telling that the child is not fit to the academic system or should we go for a new pattern of education system?

Generally in the school, what we the teachers and authority do. We give more importance to the child who is doing well in studies only. The best student or scholar award is given to the children on the basis of academic achievement. We recklessly neglect the extracurricular achievement of the children. If the studies is not their within the child, he may be good at numerous field such as sports, music and art; we are failing to count the child's achievement other than academic. All prizes are for the children of class position holder. It's just a blow to the other children- choosing 1,2,3 and neglecting others. When a child fail or expelled from a school, have we understand the emotional status of him/her? If the child is accepted in school as failed or drop out, the child has no alternative in his life except to suicide or to build him as a bad man in the society.

So, now the question before us that ‘do we respect the extracurricular activities/achievement of the child? Do we include the extracurricular achievements in the system of rating a child good and bad? Do we keep pass/fail criteria on the basis of other achievement of the child or we want to rate every child from the academic point of view? It's very sorrow to say that in maximum report card of the children of schools we see the evaluation of only subjective mark and no place for sports, music or painting. Even some schools make partiality by giving grades to extracurricular achievements and marks for pass and fail to subjects such as Maths, Science or SST on the report card.

Is it the best or right judgment to pass and fail a child on the basis of subjective marks? Is it correct to follow one type of academic rating system for all whereas children are unique in their characters in different fields? Should we go for forcing the children to put on one similar size shoe to all though the size of their foot is different from child to child? That's a big question to ask the present educationists and thinkers of our country. For how many days this type of monopoly education system will continue? Where is the alternative education before child in the same school if the child is bad in studies and good in other fields? For how many days these illogical and unreasonable pass/fail criteria will go on? For how many days the pupils wait for justice?

The government is trying to apply ‘no fail system' in every school up to class VIII. It is a very good step so to say. But, ‘has government planned to give an alternative report/achievement card in every school to give importance and judge the achievement of the child from different angle so that every child will get education according to his personal ability?' How will be our country when every child will be guaranteed their personal skill which will help him to show himself as worthy as a bright citizen in future?

Harekrushna Behera - Teacher in Social Science
E-Mail - hare_321ku(at)rediffmail.com
Qualification- M.Phil,B.Ed,Vedanta