"What the Teacher Knows is different from what the Learner Needs" 💜💜💜 #reflections

Why our Present Systems [of Assessing the Student] are Deeply Outdated!

A Case for A Huge Overhaul in Student Assessment and Evaluation

And A Plea for - Dismantling conservative ideas, challenging outmoded and outdated norms, and disrupting the status quo!

#reflections 

16th April 2025

Today a few of us colleagues were having a very spirited and rewarding discussion time on how to break free of some of the slavish adherence in academia to succumb (albeit willy-nilly) to the trap of the traditional modes of assessing and evaluating a student’s potential.

Well, gone are the days of the ‘chalk and talk’ – teacher-driven approach – wherein the teacher was tasked with dutifully ‘delivering’ knowledge to the learner!

In today’s context, the teacher’s role has been relegated to that of a mere ‘facilitator’ of knowledge, something akin to the likes of a ‘catalyst’ that Eliot speaks of, in his TLS-famed ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ essay.

As such, modes of assessment and evaluation of the student’s potential also need a huge overhaul and a radical revisioning of sorts.

It is true that, written examinations have for centuries, served as the primary means of gauging a student’s competencies. However, in this data-driven digital age that we dwell in, it is imperative for the teacher to be aware of the limitations (and the pitfalls) of traditional assessment.

These standardized testing methods of yore (including today’s LOCF) are conducted in a formal set-up, where students are required to rigorously respond to a ‘set of questions’ ‘set’ by ‘some’ professor, from within their own limited and limiting perspective of literature, and the student is asked to jot down their responses to the professor’s questions, within the stipulated time-frame, which again is doubly-restrictive for the student!

One of my past colleagues in the American College – Dr. Chandramohan Nair - used to say this axiomatic statement time and again –

‘As teachers, we should always bear in mind that, what we know, is different from what the learner needs!’

Well, this statement, that he said, 23 years ago, hold much-o-much relevance even today.

Coming back –

As a teacher, personally, it is my sincere wish and desire that - the limitations of the traditional methods of assessment, are intensely discussed and debated in Colloquiums, Panels, Symposiums, Conferences and Seminars.

In fact, I strongly feel that, these traditional methods of assessment drastically deny agency to the student!

They more often focus on assessing the cognitive skills alone, leaving aside the other crucial aspects of a student’s potential – like creative skills, critical-thinking skills, problem-solving skills, collaboration skills, communication skills, people-skills, etc.

Over the years, we as teachers would have witnessed our students demonstrating exceptional felicity of expression when it comes to acing their written examinations, bagging the top ranks in class! However, the same top-ranked students would be lagging behind in their people-skills or creative skills, by miles!

That’s because by default, (and my apologies if I’m rubbing someone on the wrong side on this) 😊 traditional written examinations inadvertently encourage rote memorization rather than the ability to apply knowledge in real-world contexts.

And most importantly, these traditional modes of examination focus solely on the final product – i.e., the final marks / grades of the student – one reason why students today have this very insanely habit of comparing their marks with the marks of their classmates, pressurised into this situation by the emphasis on marks and ranks as the sole evaluative criteria of a student’s capabilities!

It’s time the system undergoes a radical revisionism and a systematic overhaul of sorts!

As the fabulous Pablo Picasso so beautifully said it –

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction”

Looks quite paradoxical and counter-intuitive, ain’t it? 😊

Well, that’s because, we tend to normally assume that, the very process of destruction by default connotes to mean demolition, decay, and obliteration.

To Picasso, however, this ‘destruction’ of the old order is of paramount importance and significance, because, it clears the space for the ‘new’ to emerge!

So it’s a kind of positive destruction or creative destruction! (Yes, why not rope in Derrida as well!)

And this ‘act of creative destruction’ requires the vigorous dismantling of old and outdated ideas, challenging outmoded norms, and disrupting the status quo!

To Joseph Schumpeter, the renowned economist, “This creative destruction, is the driving force of real progress”.

Well, the time has indeed come for academia to confront head-on these limiting beliefs, and to dismantle unhealthy examination practices of yore, to make way for new perspectives, new knowledge and newer modes of understanding. 

I wish to quote from my favourite German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche’s power-lines in his Gay Science –

For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!

Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas!

Live at war with your peers and yourselves!

Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge!

Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer!

At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!”

The takeaway? 😉

Creation ain’t ex nihilo. It’s rather ex materia! 😊 which necessitates a disruption and a dismantling of the old order!

Let me now end this blogpost with the concluding lines of the famous speech by Martin Luther – at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D. C.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last!

Yes! free from the tyranny of tradition!

Free from the tyranny of written examinations! 😊

That’s when every MCC-ian would join Thoreau and proclaim -

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately” 😊