The questioner is judged by the questions asked while those who answer them are judged by the answers they give. Judged by this norm, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) comes off as a questioner with retrograde views and poor taste, having told students to answer questions based on a passage full of wrong ideas. The Class 10 English Board exam held on Sunday had a comprehension passage full of sexist and patriarchal ideas. It said that the “emancipation of the wife destroyed parents’ authority over children”. It also said that “women gaining independence is the main reason for a wide variety of social and family problems’’ and “Wives stop obeying their husbands and that is the main reason children and servants are indisciplined.” This was followed by the assertion that “it was only by accepting her husband’s way that a mother could gain obedience over (sic) the younger ones”. The students were to read the passage and tick the right answers to questions asked about it.
The CBSE has expressed regret and dropped the question after nationwide outrage over the passage. Congress president Sonia Gandhi raised the issue in Parliament and sought an explanation. The CBSE has also promised to set up an expert committee to review and strengthen the question-setting process. It is unfortunate that there is no such mechanism now. Questions should be set by experts who know their meaning, too, not just their answers. Students of the most impressionable age were taking the exam and the passage presented misogynistic ideas as obvious truth. This was worse than asking the students whether these ideas were right or wrong. The CBSE has agreed that the passage was not in accordance with guidelines and has termed the incident as unfortunate, but some questions about it will remain.
The controversial passage reaffirms some of the entrenched ideas and attitudes in our society. Education is meant to fight these ideas and to prevent children’s minds from being contaminated with them. The enrolment of girl students in schools and colleges is encouraged and their numbers are increasing. Promotion of the ideas of equal status of men and women and gender justice is an important aim of education, but incidents like this defeat that purpose. Routine mistakes occur in CBSE examinations -- out-of-syllabus questions, grammatical errors, and incorrect keys, etc. But the passage in Sunday’s exam was quite something else. We know where such ideas come from. The question is, how did CBSE become tainted with them. The largest board of education in the country must make public the results of its inquiry, fix responsibility, and ensure that such ‘mistakes’ do not occur again.
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