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Figure this out. A second grader loses marks in her monthly test because she thought ’sat’ rhymes with ‘bat’. Apparently, her teacher swears by the students’ guidebook, which lists only ‘cat’ and ‘mat’ as the right answers.

A six year old in grade one, when asked the number of days in a week, happily recites, “Sunday, Monday, Tuesday… Saturday,” and promptly loses points for it. The right answer, obviously, is 7.

Welcome to the zombie schools.

These are but two actual instances of how our schools’ produce is hardwired to see the world in black and white. They enter an unforgiving multi-colour world oblivious to the existence of anything beyond right answers and wrong answers.

They go through life convinced that exams determine one’s worth in life, that teaching and learning are done in schools (!) alone (!!). They don’t find it funny that their intelligence is measured against how much they know of books of someone else’s choice.

But, like everyone else, they get through life and… here’s the interesting bit. Some of them become teachers!

Posted on Saturday, January 7th, 2006 at 1:27 pm and filed under learning.

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