Opinion Common University Entrance Test won’t solve the real problems
Avijit Pathak writes: To transform education we need to work on the quality of schools and pedagogy, honest and fair recruitment of teachers, relative autonomy of academic institutions and learn to value the uniqueness of each child.
Students outside a school for admission in New Delhi. (Express Photo: Praveen Khanna, File) 
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It is not easy to take a categorical position on the UGC’s latest move to introduce the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for admissions in undergraduate courses in 45 central universities in the country. True, no one can negate its immediate appeal. In a country like ours, because of the uneven quality of different school boards — from the much-hyped CBSC and ICSE to not so rigorous regional boards — there is a huge trust deficit and suspicion about the academic quality of even the “toppers”. No wonder, a centralised mode of ranking and evaluation through the CUET is bound to have its appeal; it promises an “objective” and “value-neutral” measurable index for selecting and eliminating young aspirants for different courses. Furthermore, this centralised test would free the tension-ridden youngsters from the pressure of writing multiple entrance tests in different colleges/universities. Likewise, the supremacy of the CUET score/ranking in the selection process would invariably eliminate the pathology of absurd and inflated cut-offs for admissions in “branded” colleges.
This is like saying that one need not necessarily get 499/500 in the board exam to study psychology in Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi University! The only thing that would matter now is one’s performance in the CUET. Moreover, the proponents of a standardised test like this would always argue that there is no other way to filter people when the number of aspirants is too high; and this is possible only when we avoid “subjective biases”, cherish “objectivity”, and quantify and measure with mathematical precision one’s mental aptitude and domain knowledge in a specific discipline.
Yet, despite these practical arguments, we should also acquire the courage to see the limitations of this sort of standardised test. First, the dominant structure of education prevalent in the country is essentially book-centric and exam-oriented; either rote learning or strategic learning (a gift of coaching centres) is its essence; and far from learning and unlearning with joy, wonder and creativity, young students become strategists or exam-warriors.
Weekly tests, monthly tests, mock tests, and all sorts of standardised tests — NEET, JEE, and mathematics or science Olympiads — invade the mental landscape of our students. Under these circumstances, true learning suffers. Is it, therefore, surprising that for an IIT aspirant, physics tends to become primarily FIITJEE physics, or mathematics is nothing more than what the coaching centres at Kota consider worth teaching? The question is: Will the CUET alter the scenario? Or, will it be yet another addition in the list of tests our children have to prepare for with stress and anxiety? And will it be possible for teachers in our schools to teach history or literature, and geography or chemistry with joy and creative surplus? Or, will they be further pressurised to teach only for these standardised tests? Will they find themselves insignificant and irrelevant as educators amid the “experts” who control the National Testing Agency? Is it that, in the coming years, schools are going to lose their relevance as students and parents are likely to rely primarily on gigantic coaching centres and fancy Ed Tech companies?
Second, we should not forget to ask yet another pertinent question: Is the tyranny of the MCQ-centric “objective” tests diminishing what every genuine learner needs — creative exploration, interpretative understanding and self-reflexivity? Even if the proponents of scientism assert that physics or mathematics is purely objective, and free from ambiguities associated with subjective interpretations, is it applicable to the domain of humanities and social sciences? Take an illustration. Can there be one and only one “correct” answer to a question like this: Was Swami Vivekananda a Hindu nationalist? Or, for that matter, was Jawaharlal Nehru a western modernist? These are complex questions with nuanced and diverse interpretations.
And if, in the name of “objective” tests, our young students are deprived of the hermeneutic art of interpretation and skill of argumentation, and compelled to reduce everything —be it an algebraic equation or the curved trajectory of the freedom struggle — into an “objective” fact, we would do great damage to their creativity. Definitely, there is something more in Gandhi than, say, the hard fact relating to the date of his birth or assassination, or the year of publication of My Experiments with Truth. If nothing matters more than these “objective facts” in standardised tests, our children would lose the enchanting power of creative articulation, and culture of debate and contestation.
Meaningful learning is not just about exams; nor does meaningful teaching aim at transforming young students into reckless strategists and hyper-competitive exam-warriors. And textbooks — including the NCERT books sanctified by the CUET — are not sacred. In fact, truly meaningful learning takes place outside the parameters of the official texts and curriculum. The techno-managers of the National Testing Agency might not go beyond the NCERT texts. But who knows a young learner’s worldview might undergo a process of radical transformation simply because an enabling teacher has inspired her to see beyond the “syllabus”, and read a short story by Saadat Hasan Manto, a poem by Walt Whitman, or a conversation between Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore?
Hence, for real transformation, we have to see beyond the CUET, work on the quality of schools and creatively nuanced life-affirming pedagogy; and we must think of honest and fair recruitment of spirited teachers, and relative autonomy of academic institutions. And above all, we must learn to value the uniqueness of each child — the possibility of her inner flowering. Will it ever be possible?
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 29, 2022 under the title ‘An answer called CUET’. Pathak writes extensively on education and culture
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