Formal letters!

I have not looked at the English examination question-papers lately. Hopefully, they have got rid of the “informal” and “formal” letter-writing questions. No one writes letters in this day and age- whether they be informal or formal letters or letters of love! Even the letters to the editor, is invariably by someone who continues to hang on from an earlier Ice-Age!

Back then, in school, “informal letters” revolved around topics like- “write a letter to your grandparents on how you spent your summer vacation”.

A “formal letter” was a different beast. It was centered on complaints- “Write a letter to the Municipal Corporation that the street dogs in the neighborhood are a menace”. Though the topic appears innocuous, the devil was in the detail.

There was perennial confusion whether the “from” and “to” address should be on the same or opposite side of the paper. So was the problem when it came to addressing the person. Should it be the honorific “Respected sir” or the non-committal “To whomsoever it may concern”?

Then came the all-important line called “Subject”.  Apparently, the addressee for the formal letter was always in such a tearing hurry that everything had to be compressed in the “Subject”. But once you wrote “Subject: Street dog menace”, you hit a writer’s block. What more do you write?  You were forced to write inconsequential phrases of restatement- “This is to bring to your kind attention sir, that the street dogs have become a menace.” You added inane details- how dogs bark through the night and keep everyone awake, how they bite the innocent bystander and spread diseases like rabies followed by an abrupt “etc.” when you ran out of ideas!

It seemed presumptuous that the addressee would need such basic education, but that was the only way to add girth to the content! You also stoked the addressee’s ego with pompous phrases- “Sir, we appeal to your esteemed self to kindly look into the matter at the earliest”.

Finally, you ended the letter with an epithet to describe your servile self- ranging from “yours respectfully” to “yours obediently”.

The letter writing age has thankfully ended. Till date, we know of no one, who read the letter, tracked down the letter-writer and signed a peace-accord with the street dogs! Perhaps, in some forgotten landfill, generations of unread formal letters are piled up, touching the sky!

These days, it is simple to file a complaint by accessing a “portal” on your mobile. You have to only cross the “captcha” hurdle to prove you are a human being and not a street dog! Once that is done, you can write the same complaint “Street dog menace” and hope for the best!

Today's "touch me not" schools!

When Tenali Rama was in school, the teacher asked him, “Where are the Vindhya mountains?” Tenali Rama answered, “I do not know”. The teacher got annoyed and said, “Stand up on the bench!” Rama stood on the bench and said, “I still do not see the mountains!” We chuckle at Tenali Rama’s retort.

Imagine if this incident happens in modern times. The next day, Tenali Rama’s father will rush to school and will meet the principal. He will express outrage that his ward was made to stand on a bench. The CCTV footage of the incident will be all over social media. The school will be blacklisted and as far as the teacher goes, his tenure will be over.

Punishment is totally unacceptable in today’s schools. Back then, parents trusted the teacher and gave a free hand to reprimand the child. If there was a parent-teacher meeting, it was not unusual for the teacher to hold the mischievous boy by the ear, even as she conversed with the parent! They were equal partners when it came to the child’s wellbeing.

Punishments came in different flavors- if the mistake was occasional, you were let off with a scolding. A serial offender had to write an imposition, “I will not talk in class”! Sometimes, you had to stand outside the classroom, or asked to run around the playground! If you were distracted, a piece of chalk came flying as a wake-up call! If the offenders were too many, the entire class got whacked! And if the offense was grave, the whole class was detained till the offender owned up! These incidents were never blown out of proportion, and as the saying goes, what happened on the field, stayed on the field.

Along the way, you picked up soft skills. You learnt to deal with the “class monitor” in an astute way. The equation with the rest of the class was equally crucial- like the loyalty of a soldier towards his regiment. At no time could you let your comrades down. Later in life, these learnings helped to be a natural team-player.

Decades later, now an adult, you went back to the same teacher and recounted these punishment tales! The teacher’s eyes moistened, she placed her hand on your shoulder and smiled, having lost all context.

While severe corporal punishment is reprehensible, we have now veered to the other extreme where teachers are asked to stay totally aloof. The loser is the child. In life’s journey, there will be challenging situations. The preparation for life’s battles must begin upfront, in our schools. Mathematics is important; so is the mindset to deal with criticism and to endure a degree of hardship.

Those alluring alliterations!

English Grammar is not everyone’s cup of tea! You treated the subject with the facial expression of one administered with castor oil! While elementary Grammar centered on “nouns” and “verbs” was tolerable, anything beyond that was insipid. And when it came to topics like “Gerund”, you simply gave up! The teacher rambled away, and except for a few crows sitting on the windowsill, no one else was  interested!

The desultory proceedings in the Grammar class changed dramatically one day! The topic was “Figures of Speech” and “Alliteration” in particular. In bold letters, the teacher wrote on the blackboard- “She sells seashells on the seashore!” The entire class giggled!  And with the next example- “Round and round the rugged road, the ragged rascal ran!”, the class was in splits!

And now, alliterations rained in a torrent. The British left the shores of India decades ago, but Betty’s escapades with butter are a part of local folklore! “Betty bought a bit of butter, but the bit of butter was bitter!” And how she went and bought better butter, to make the “bitter butter better”!

The rest of the day was a fish market. Each student was in his own, repeating the sentences aloud over and over. When you enunciated alliterative sentences slowly, it was simple, like a treadmill set at a gentle pace. But once you cranked up the speed, you fumbled and spoke gibberish! It appeared only Sridhar had an anatomically different tongue.  He breezed through the alliterations effortlessly, leaving the rest of us, tongue-tied.

But the best of them, meet their match! Someone came up with an innocuous example in the vernacular called “kachcha papad pakka papad”. May be, it was the collective pressure of the rest of the class, but Sridhar floundered like the Titanic hitting the iceberg. He stumbled over the sentence, babbling like a baby! To his credit, he argued that this was not an alliteration, but a tongue-twister. Such intricacies were lost on us.

The problem with alliterations is that once they enter your head, they hold you hostage. You are forced to pamper them, and in the process, you irritate one and all. After an hour of “Betty” at home, my sister could not stand it anymore and shot back, “Can you stop this nonsense now?”

As we age, we get more uptight and rigid. Repeating alliterations aloud brings an instant smile. We have no idea how alliterations work to smoothen out the mental wrinkles. It could be the power in the wording, or perhaps the memory of childhood or the sheer absurdity of it all. We laugh with abandon, shoulders rocking, like that kid, who once sat in that English Grammar class!

Like a pack of cards!

Back then, traditional homes had parental locks installed when it came to playing cards. The game was considered inappropriate for children. But you learnt to bend the rule by convincing everyone that cards were actually “educational”! Questions on Probability in Mathematics could be answered only with a good understanding of Kings and Queens, Jacks and Jokers!

During summer vacation, the rules were relaxed. That’s when friends in the neighborhood huddled together in one home. The afternoons were a riot with several rounds of card-games. Decision making was tough, with each member floating his favorite game- ranging from “Donkey” to “Bluff”. The artwork on the cards was attractive, and the feel was silken. No wonder people got addicted, leave alone the urge to gamble!

Neighborhood kids came in all flavors- the novice who had to be tutored right through the game and the consummate expert who won every time. You were wary of the player who wore a mischievous smile.  He was just too jolly and that aroused suspicion. His eyes were shifty, as he slyly peeked into his neighbor’s cards! An element of deceit was an integral part of the game!

It was never easy for the loser. He was stuck with too many cards to hold. “You can use it as a hand-fan!” friends joked, leaving him teary-eyed! The loser felt the entire world conspired against him. He argued that he was deliberately doled “bad” cards and walked off in a huff! It took quite an effort to cajole him back into the game.

Sometimes, an adult who was adept at the game joined these sessions. When he shuffled cards, there was an extra finesse. Dividing the cards into 2 bundles, his fingers moved like a currency-counting machine as he shuffled one bundle into the other. When we tried the same, it was a fiasco and the protests were widespread with shouts of, “Don’t bend and spoil the cards! They will be unusable!”

Cards and magic tricks went together. The neighborhood magician began with- “Think of any card”. At the end of it, he had an uncanny knack to zero-down on the precise card! You pleaded with him to unravel the trick. That day, you were over the moon and did nothing else, except repeat the trick to all you knew, often bungling in the act and spilling the beans!

And then, there were afternoons, when you didn’t play but stacked the cards to build an enormous Eiffel Tower. It stood 4-ft high and you beamed with pride. But you learnt a sobering lesson. It required just a moment of carelessness, and the entire edifice, built over hours with inordinate care, collapsed like a pack of cards! That’s life!

 

The scourge of multiple-choice questions!

Back then, exams had no multiple-choice questions. All answers had to be written in full, discursively and elaborately. Students joked that the evaluator measured the answers in “cubits” (elbow length) and gave marks proportionately. Alternately, the evaluator weighed each answer-booklet in kilograms! Students made tall claims that could not be verified! Apparently, they inflated the answers by peppering the middle paragraphs with gibberish- juicy dialogues from Bollywood or Cricket based drivel!

There was an element of subjectivity in the evaluation. Cosmetics overrode content- someone with a pretty handwriting invariably scored more marks. If you scored badly, you squarely blamed the evaluator- “I am sure he had a quarrel with his wife! No wonder he gave me such poor marks!”

To remove this bias, the powers that be, came up with the concept of multiple-choice questions (MCQs). Now, you do not have to write a single sentence. All you have to do is to select the correct option. Thanks to the IT revolution, the evaluation is automated. Within minutes of completion of the exam, the result is available along with a bell-curve on where you fall in the spectrum. MCQs have taken over all exams, the world over.

For all the niceties of MCQs, they have their share of problems. You know the subject well, but the listed options for questions are vague and incomprehensible. To complicate it, some MCQs ask the student to choose “all options” for a given question, leaving you racked with doubt. Sometimes, the answers have to be marked on a separate sheet leading to “block shift” blunders. You miss a particular question on the answer sheet and all answers are now shifted and wrong! The automated evaluation shows no mercy. As far as cheats are concerned, MCQs are like manna from heaven- someone simply dictated- 1-A, 2-C and so on.

MCQs stoke the gambler in you- rather than leave a question unanswered, you choose any arbitrary option! To uproot this malaise, MCQs came up with “negative marking” for wrong answers. And now, you have a whole new problem. It looks better to leave the entire paper unanswered and score a zero, than choose incorrect options that could leave you with a negative balance!

The list is unending. We would go far enough to say that MCQs polarize society by forcing you to answer “yes” or “no” with no scope for a “may be”! They also reinforce a world that is becoming increasingly transactional and devoid of feeling. Back then, students appealed to the examiner’s compassion with a personal note at the top of the paper, “Madam, I am writing this exam for the 5^th time! Please save me!” MCQs can have none of this.