Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Seshan bemoans decline in standards, quality of teaching

Meera Srinivasan

Average Indian boy or girl today "has no presence of mind"

T.N. Seshan. — Photo: S. Thanthoni

CHENNAI: "There is a misconception that the remuneration is poor in Civil Services. That is not true. Along with the salary come a whole lot of perks," says former Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan.

"The perception that IT jobs pay well has led many people to take up courses in engineering and management. Secondly, several States have destroyed the standard of English. Not many children read grammar nowadays. I find that many engineering graduates cannot write without spelling or grammatical errors," he says.

In a chat with The Hindu recently, Mr. Seshan attributed the overall fall in performance to changing lifestyles and deterioration in the quality of teaching. "In earlier days, though salaries were a pittance, teachers were very dedicated [to their work]. Now, we cannot blame them as pay scales remain low," he said.

Speaking on students' performance in the entrance examination for the civil services, Mr. Seshan, who runs Pragnya Academy for Career Excellence (PACE) to train aspiring civil servants, said the quality of students appearing for the examination had changed over the years.

The academy was started in 2003 to ensure a flow of competent people to civil services. The academy has trained 3 batches of students since then.

"About four to five lakh students appear for the examination. Some 1,200 candidates get interview calls after the preliminary examination, and only about 425 get recruited. There are 20 services that candidates could be recruited for depending on their scores," he said.

Mr. Seshan also discussed the changes he had observed in the education scenario. "The average Indian boy or girl has no presence of mind. The standard of English has also fallen. Development of anything called `thinking' is negligible in universities," he said.

"Many people think mastering yearbooks is the easy way out. Not necessarily, as the interview panel will also test the candidate's presence of mind," he said.

In his days, students had to secure a separate minimum in the interview to be eligible for recruitment. But, now it is not mandatory for students to score a particular minimum in the interviews anymore.

When asked about the fall in performance levels of students from the south and particularly Tamil Nadu, Mr. Seshan said several new avenues had come up, offering great scope for specialisation.

He said PACE aimed at providing quality training to students and was not started for monetary benefits. Applications are available at the academy. Coaching for the new batch (appearing for the examination in 2007) will begin in August. For further details, call 044 - 24345868 or write to paceias@yahoo.com

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