The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Literature Corner
ONCE upon a time when I was a chief-examiner responsible for the setting of examination papers during the days of the late Geoffrey Kuhudzai (Rest in peace Geoff) we were not allowed to go public and reveal that role and business. Let alone acting as consultants or resource persons in schools!
Then, it was a punishable offence to assist schools or individuals to answer exam questions if you were a chief examiner. I remember during my ‘initiation’ into this examination business the emphasis was serious: “Not even your wife or husband must know you set examination papers.”
Did things change along the line? Are chief examiners now allowed to carry billboards on their foreheads and leave their centres of work and go out to assist schools, classes or individuals to handle examinations?
I also know a schools inspector who busily makes private rounds in schools coaching, teaching and mentoring students how to do well in the learning area, he (or she?) is an inspector. Is this allowed? I really want someone to answer these questions and inform the public before I invite the Provincial Education Director to shed light on these seemingly corrupt or unfair practices.
Back then it was the duty and job of classroom practitioners (teachers) to prepare students for examinations. If a marker of a subject area is also a teacher that should be a fair advantage for students to get to understand how the actual exam marking is done. (Of course remember being a marker does not make a teacher a competent one.)
Many schools boast that they have good teachers because they are exam markers. Don’t be so simple minded. I almost said ‘Don’t be so naïve.’ Marking is one skill demanding particular competence; teaching is another, also demanding particular expertise. Of course some markers are brilliant or effective teachers but that is not a rule.
You cannot trust all soccer players to play any position in the game because they belong to the same team. A goal-keeper prevents/stops goals from the opponent team. Strikers are paid to slot goals into the net. I hope I am not over simplifying the markers-are-good-teachers fallacy.
Back to the self-imposed examination doctors who set the papers and assist students to answer them. One of them (the examiner-consultant-teacher in one) is popular or notorious for telling A-Level students in the learning area he is chief examiner that candidates must not expect an ‘A’ grade in a final exam. “This is not possible,” he says. Really?
Of course that is nonsense, isn’t it? If someone who sets the paper (one of them) says candidates cannot get an ‘A’ in Literature we want to find out why and what these individuals privileged with the business of setting exams and marking them actually do to ensure Literature becomes as difficult to pass as we know it now.
Is it the learning area that is difficult or the people charged with running the setting and marking of papers that are difficult?
Why would ‘experts’ sit down to ask questions they know no candidate will answer and get an ‘A’? Are the few ‘As’ that we have seen and celebrated miracles or mistakes or were they answers they donated in their ‘nocturnal’ school visits? What happens to the schools that cannot pay for these classified lectures? What do they do?
If these examiners want to become private consultants why do they not do so openly as education business ventures? If they are allowed to coach schools on examination techniques tips and guidelines, let them cover all schools regardless of each school’s geographical location and financial power.
These ‘experts’ have become notorious mud-slingers specialising in back-biting and back stabbing of genuine ‘rivals’ who are equally competent or often better in the business of resource-in-put.
They mislead students and schools into believing only they know it all and everyone else is fake. They literally confuse students they purport to assist simply because they want to push out ‘rival’ resource persons.
It’s intellectually embarrassing. They are scared of competitors who seemingly share their milk-cows (paying schools). Money yes, who does not want an extra dollar? But play the game professionally.
Let students be exposed to whatever source of information and knowledge they can access. And let them choose who delivers better and ease their understanding of relevant material.
21st Century education needs open-minded, continuous knowledge and information seekers prepared to learn, as they teach or supervise learning, not primitive closed-minded intellectual noise-makers; educational Solomons who think, imagine and dream they are divine teachers qualified and competent enough to coach, manage and referee educational Premier leagues.
The Minister of Primary and Secondary education must soon moot commissions of enquiry into why certain learning areas are dismally failed, Literature in English being one of if not the worst failed at A-Level.
Brilliant candidates flop year in year out. Meanwhile ‘responsible authorities’ in examinations say ‘No candidates can be good enough to be awarded As.’ This is not what the New Curriculum is all about. Or is it?
What is wrong with the Literature examinations; the setting, the teaching and the marking, everything around it? Whatever it is, something must be terribly wrong.
