Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi   

Former VC reviews education system

TIRUCHI: Should university courses be dependent solely on the marks obtained in Plus Two examinations? Should a Plus Two student be required to study six subjects and pass in all subjects in a single attempt for admission to certain courses? What is the need to insist that those pursuing Engineering course in English medium should have a pass in Tamil and Biology or some subject in part 3 in addition to Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry? Similarly, what is the academic need for insisting that one should pass Plus Two in English to pursue a course through Tamil medium in a college?

Given the information that the student who was ranked first in the list of candidates to be admitted to the medical course has rejected the offer and joined the engineering course, what is the logic in our assumption that the marks obtained in the Plus Two examination in Physics, Chemistry and Biology indicate the aptitude of an individual to pursue medical course? Should the syllabi be so heavy? Should there be only one level of examination and should it be stipulated that every one passes the examination in all the subjects in order to move to the next class? Should a student be denied the option to switch over from science to arts group after Plus Two?

Emphasising on the need for academics to seriously consider the happenings in the school system so that education is brought back to the right track, S. Muthukumaran, former Vice-Chancellor, Bharathidasan University and former Member Secretary, Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education, spelt out the answers for these questions in his special lecture on ‘A Critical Review of the Present Education Programmes’ organised by the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Career Development, Bharathidasan University, recently.

A comprehensive evaluation of the performance of students in all the 12 years of schooling on academic, co-curricular and extra-curricular fronts should be made paramount for admission to colleges, Dr. Muthukumaran said adding only quality input could be processed into quality output.

Under the present system, it is possible for a student to score well with eleventh hour preparation using question papers of previous years. He said that it was the efficacy of the school system that determined the country’s prosperity.

Admission to colleges must be made on the marks in the subjects that are relevant to the higher education programme, unmindful of whether students pass or fail in the remaining subjects.

To make the system project the actual capabilities of students rather than indicate their shortcomings, the examination should be conducted at different levels. The content for school education should be revamped with unique aspects of native knowledge.

Presiding over, Vice-Chancellor M. Ponnavaikko spoke of the possibility of offering programmes in medicine and engineering in Tamil medium by retaining the technical and scientific terms. The university’s new M.Tech programmes in Computer Science and Engineering, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics will be offered in both English and Tamil mediums. He said students would understand the fundamentals only if they studied in the mother tongue.

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