Goof-ups galore at Madhyamik exam

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, February 24, 2007
After the slip up in the English question paper, it was the turn of the Life Science paper on Saturday to baffle the students taking this year’s Madhyamik exams. There were contradictory questions in the English and Bengali versions of the question paper, some of which were also outright wrong as well.
While the Bengali version of question 2-(iii) asked students which vitamin deficiency lead to night blindness, in the English the word ‘vitamin’ was replaced with ‘hormone’. Though it was just a one-mark question, it put students in a spot, as no answer is possible for the English version.
“It is a big mistake. The question is baseless. Night blindness is caused due to the deficiency of vitamin A and hormones have nothing to do with it. The paper setters and moderators should have noticed it,” said Paromita Hota, life science teacher at Alipore Multipurpose Girls’ School.
Another teaser for students taking the English version was question 2-(ii). While the Bengali version asked ‘in which chamber of the human heart does the pulmonary vein open?’ the word ‘vein’ was substituted by ‘artery’ in the English version.
The answer to the Bengali version of this one-mark question is ‘left atrium’ while, the answer to the English version would be ‘right ventricle’. “The question in the English version is wrong not only because ‘vein’ was replaced by ‘artery’ but also because an artery never opens into but originates from the heart. It is the vein, which opens there,” said Hota.
In another question, the answer was inadvertently given out in the Bengali version of the paper. In the Bengali version, the question read: “What kind of microbe is yeast? Why is it called a beneficial fungus?” While the second part of this 3-mark question answered the first half of the question in the Bengali version, at least the English version did not mention the telling word.
“What have the paper setters and moderators been doing? How can such mistakes happen? This is the first batch of students for the new syllabus and such mistakes are confusing them. They are getting tense for their next exam,” said Subhankar Bandopadhyay, general secretary of Secondary Teachers’ and Employees’ Association.
Ujjal Basu, president of WBBSE, admitted that the error in question 2-(iii) was the board’s fault, but he refused to acknowledge the other goof-ups. However he assured that students’ interests would be looked after.
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com