I happened to chance upon this taxi driver acquaintance of mine furiously rebuking his apprentice for failing on his written driving exam. I traveled to sort out some family issues back home in Sewfi, he said. I told him Id be gone for a few weeks and that the moment I return wed begin working on getting him a license. His voice was trembling as he spoke. Why do you have to throw away this much money registering for some exams; around here is that how you obtain a license? Sheepishly, the apprentice stood beside him scratching his head. Later, he would explain to me that he clicked on a series of wrong buttons on the exam. The first button led to a page which enquired whether or not he wished to exit the exam, to which he mistakenly clicked Exit. And this was before he had answered a single question. As it happened the changes could not be reversed. It was altogether a really unfortunate account except, I wasnt buying it. So, rather casually, I drew out a paper from a research article I had printed. It was something on value-at-risk and stress-testing. I could feel the apprentice eyeing me with interest. I glanced over it at length and pretended to have a good laugh. What? the lad enquired curiously. Cmon. Whats so funny? Feigning a hearty laugh, I pressed the paper into his chest. What would you do if your landlady did this to you? I asked, pointing at the paper and still laughing. I watched the expectant excitement on his face pale into sudden dread. He held out the paper and examined it as he would a corpse. He calmly braced himself. With a flick of his head he seemed to regain his composure. He was steady and alert; he wasnt giving himself away. Ha, like I would kill her! came the nervous reply. At that instant, it confirmed my suspicion. Dude couldnt read. Ever since the incident, Ive been made to wonder how it comes to be that in a country with such widely varied sizes and architecture of schools under trees, an evaluation process as primal as a driving exam comes to be conducted only in the Queens language. At the very least it should be available in a host of our local languages. Up until quite recently, it was unheard of to come across a taxi driver with a university degree. Thanks to the exceptional leadership of our booming economy and a looming liaison with the IMF, it is likely to become an increasingly common feature. But the population of our drivers predominantly remains challenged in the aspect of literacy; a situation that is further complicated by the reality that as far as our local languages go, the literate segment of the nations population is about just as illiterate as the illiterate segment of the population. One clear consequence of having a foreign language being the only official language is that rightful participation in the nations affairs becomes a privilege from which the better segment of the nation is largely excluded. In addressing the issue, what might prove exhaustive as a proudly homegrown measure in rendering the written driving exam more candidate-friendly might be to introduce the option of an audio version of the exam in a vast array of local languages, to make it more convenient for the segments of the population that have challenges with regards to the letters, to participate with equal ease.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 05:41:13 +0000
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