The recent proposal of the Union human resources development ministry, enumerated in the National Curriculum Framework for School Education - drawn up by the National Council for Educational Research and Training - is a classic example of noble intentions going awry. The noble intentions in the proposal are not difficult to find. For one, it seeks to remove the widespread disparity in the standards of examination conducted by 34 boards of secondary and higher secondary education in the country. This, the government argues, 'has led to multiplicity of entrance tests conducted by professional institutions in areas like engineering, medicine and management, causing stress and strain among students and parents, besides giving rise to malpractices and wasteful expenditure.' With the objective of reducing the burden of the syllabus on the young learner, the government has sought to integrate the teaching of science and technology upto the secondary level. Also, a new 'three language formula' has been promoted which lays emphasis on 'teaching Hindi as the official language of the country and Sanskrit as the language of traditional wisdom and culture of the land'. The most 'revolutionary' proposal of the government - and here it has gone one step further than the Left Front government in West Bengal - is to do away with examinations altogether in schools and having a comprehensive and continuous assessment instead. The NCFSE says, 'The performance of students at the secondary level in school examinations will be graded on a five point scale, using absolute grading and grading by directly converting marks into grades.' Upto the secondary level, the proposal visualizes no 'pass' or 'fail'. Students will thus have a free ride upto class X. At the higher secondary stage, the courses will be organized in four semesters. Evaluation of the first three semesters will be done in the respective schools, while the fourth semester examination will be conducted by the board. The government wants to ensure availability of pre-school education for all children and forbid formal teaching and testing of different subjects at this level. One need that has been identified is for a broadbased education for all children upto the secondary stage to help them become lifelong learners and acquire basic skills and high intelligent quotients, emotional quotients and spiritual quotients. The last two are novel concepts which the NCERT has come up with recently. Twenty per cent of the seats in all government and non-government institutions are to be reserved for students from the poor and underdeveloped sections of the society. These proposals must be examined first from the standpoint of practicability and ethics. The government's views have been premised upon the theory that examinations are not the true indicators of a student's knowledge, nor is there always a proper assessment of examination scripts. These criticisms are true to an extent, but this is still the best system at our disposal. Even the suggested grade system does not succeed in bypassing examinations altogether. The assessment in grades is a the reflection of conventional system, where a poor grade will be equivalent to failure. The NCERT's recommendation is thus old wine in a new bottle. Nor is it the first time that such a recommendation has been made. In 1975 and 1988, proposals similar to this were not implemented following stiff resistance from various universities. Moreover, the grade system only makes a general assessment possible, but not a specific assessment of the students. Hence, straightforward marking is far more consistent and significant. In the semester system, students would be required to earn credits. But even here, marking cannot be dispensed with. The experiment with such a system has been far from satisfactory. In West Bengal, at the primary stage, there is neither examination nor marking. This has not helped the state's overall educational standard. It is not without reason that most of the teachers' associations and teachers have protested against this recommendation. The revised three-language formula, proposed by the NCERT, is ill-intended. At the primary level, apart from English and the state language, it recommends the teaching of Hindi, the 'national language'. This proposal is reminiscent of the official language commission of 1956 which was rejected. In a multilingual country like India, a common language of communication is important, but does Hindi fit that bill? By what criterion should Hindi be considered as the national language of India and the rest of the languages 'regional'? The term, 'national language', may imply either the language used for governmental work or the common language of all citizens. If the first meaning is accepted, it would be unreasonable to think that the governments of West Bengal, Manipur, or Tamil Nadu would use Hindi as their language of administration. Neither can the term be taken in the second sense, as India never had and still does not have a common national language. Hindi should not aspire to assume that status, because that would only cause dissension. Any attempt to make Hindi compulsory in non-Hindi speaking states and give it an elevated status would be fraught with danger. The sangh parivar zealots are already going about exhorting people to speak Hindi and abjure English. If this linguistic jingoism is allowed to continue unabated, non-Hindi states will take the cue and carry on with their brand of linguistic chauvinism. In West Bengal, organizations such as the Navajagaran Mancha, Bhasa O Chetana Samity and Amra Bangali have started clamouring for the banishment of English in schools. Even the capital, Calcutta, has been renamed Kolkata. Insistence on Sanskrit as a compulsory language is likely to create problems among non-Hindu students, who are not likely to accept it as 'the language of traditional wisdom and culture'. What the NCERT has failed to realize is that English cannot be dispensed with and in this age of globalization, its importance cannot be overestimated. The introduction of value education at the elementary and primary levels has been proposed with a view to saffronizing education. The ideas of a spiritual quotient and an emotional quotient are preposterous. When asked how one could measure one's SQ, the NCERT director, I.S. Rajput, is reported to have said, 'Some things like beauty and truth cannot be measured in numbers. Teachers will be trained to measure SQ.' But he is silent as to how this mystic quotient will be arrived at. Even if there were, at the origin of the proposals, the good intention to improve the general standard of education, one fears that the government has put the cart before the horse. Teachers today have moved far from their ideals. Many of them are engaged in private tuitions. It is not as if the government is unaware of the situation, yet it has made no attempt to change the state of affairs. And till that is done, all the reform proposals will be futile. The first thing the country needs is genuine and dedicated educationists. Reforms can follow.