Nagaland's HSLC & HSSLC Honors: Colonial Visages and Reformist Appropriation

(I squirrel away every loud thought on public domains. This one was posted in a group on Facebook. I felt to archive it here).

The prestige accorded to HSLC and HSSLC results has outlived its purpose. It cries for retirement. I believe that the tradition–my mind sees it to be a form of academic vanity–are antiquated, needless, and extraneous.

Our reverence for high school achievements is a remnant of parochial colonial traditions when achievements were defined according to expertise levels of that time. See, 90+ years ago in Nagaland / among the Naga, class-x was the first standard of the highest educational qualification a Naga could ever attain.

My context is this: The most attainable ‘highest’ standard of academic qualification for the ancient Naga to land a job was class-v. Just ask an elder member from your family. Hence, by appropriation, class-x was deemed higher. Hence, by Interpretation, more prestigious.

But this is 2016. Yes, this is 2016.

• The world has already placed a man on the moon.
• Quantum physics and space technology are being challenged as “narrow” sciences by revisionists.
• Blogging–even before we the Naga have even fully understood it, is slowly fading from the web market. The 12-valve torque for F1 cars is being replaced.
• A remote keyboard for mobile phones is being designed.
• Pablo Picasso has already come and gone.
• Japan has transformed herself into a world power in mere 49 years.

This, indeed, is 2016.

Are we not aware that the average Naga during said era could manage only till middle school, that too at 35-40 years of age? That was the standard of the times. Likewise, it reflects the expertise and levels of intellectual temper during said eras. One need not be reminded that the concept of technical education, for instance, was as nonexistent as much as ideas of doctorates were alien concepts back then among the Naga.

Indeed, it is true that the Angami, the Ao, the Lotha and the Sumi Naga (please read in alphabetical order!) had pioneers who secured graduate degrees and even doctorates to become the first among the myriad Naga communities. But academic movements at the level of research scholarship emerged primarily during the ‘70s and the ‘80s only.

See, exceptions don’t make traditions. Rules are what create traditions. Hence, the perception about class-x being the highest attainment has over the past half a century become superfluous–colonist finery that offers nothing more than self-aggrandizement.

A bonus to that vanity parade is the free publicity that attention-hungry organizations and schools can devour. It’s wonderful to get our faces printed in our newspapers thanks to our achieving children. Show me 10 HSLC/HSSLC toppers over the past 20 years who found glory at class-x to become social assets. And I’ll show you 50 toppers who are today nothing more than neighborhood drunks and “educated unemployed.”

Toppers, however, deserve the honor. They raced with thousands and outran them. Naturally, society must honor them as exceptions.

However, having said that, I have no doubt that that the governments and education stakeholders are biased, even if benevolent in context. If you would honor high school and higher secondary school achievers, wouldn’t honoring toppers from the Bachelor’s and Master’s academics be even more natural?

Aren’t degrees superior achievements–academically at least? Let us honor school achievers only because there are higher levels of intellectual slants such as degrees. Let us single out the BA/B.Sc, MA/M.Sc, and research toppers. Let us laud them with the same passion and the publicity and willingness that we employ when honoring school achievers.

We the Naga are skilled in embarrassing ourselves with our often parochial and impressionable posturing. We glorify the inane but neglect the exceptional. How much more failings would we have for life and the world!

The superficial ceremonies of our small minds appear to have been given birth by prejudice and frail vanities.

Now, why do you wonder that we are called a developing, third-world society?

(Al Ngullie)