Attending SCERT conducted training session for Master Trainers in Raipur, I got an opportunity to interact with the participants during one of the activities. The activity was from the previous day which I didn’t attend. The participant were given an assignment – they were given a question which they have to answer in an essay mode based on certain (exactly 6) parameters.
The participants were grouped into three and each group were given four answer sheets (without names) to check based on the 6 parameters on a scale of 5 marks. As a new face, the members in my group were pretty eager to tell me what they were doing and why they were doing so. I watched them decide how much mark to give, what should be the rationale. I saw them negotiate mark until one tired participant passed on to the next participant to give mark as s/he wished.
As they scored the assignment, I noticed that out of the 4 papers they checked, two got 3/5 marks, one got 2.5/5 while the other one got 2/5 marks. They explained to me the rationale behind the score they give which I can understand.
But the surprise came when I asked what it would take for someone to score 5/5 marks (or 100%)! Their response is that such score is impossible because this is an essay! Then I asked them to bring this situation to a classroom, and consider that –as a teacher, teaching student a specific subject, social studies, for one year, and the student studying that social studies for one year and giving extra efforts of studying each word of the text for about two months in preparation for the final exam, what are the chances that the student would score 100% mark?
One of the participants gave me a prompt response that the chance is 0.00001%! Most of the participants nodded in agreement! One of the teacher told me about her personal experience of checking the exam paper of a class VIII student with the perfect answers. She said the paper was perfect, and there were no single mistake, the hand writing was good, and the grammar was good, but I have to cut 2 marks and give her 98/100 because if someone else check it again, there might be a difference in opinion and might not agree with the score I give, and also it is not practical to give 100% marks in social sciences no matter how good the paper is!
Initially I find that response shocking but on further reflection, that response gave me an idea of the complexities of social sciences as a subject, and also the grim reality student are faced with.
In the subject matter, it reflects the differences in how we viewed knowledge and understanding, and not just the complexities and divergence with which we can look a particular subject/issue/situation. For example, society can be defined in various ways, can be looked from various perspectives; and how would a teacher score such subject?
For the student, it is a very grim reality because no matter how hard they study, and no matter how much they understand and build their arguments, they would not get the perfect score simply because there is no specific answer like 2+2 is 4 which would fetch them 100/100 marks.
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