Hang The Z Score It’s The 3 Big Rs That Matters

An Extraordinary Meeting of the Alumni of the Forward School for Backward Boys was on with Nodath Pandithaya in the Chair.
Addressing a packed crowd of agitated parents Nodath declared: Never in the history of public examinations have students who have failed last year be deemed to have passed this year and those who had passed last year would be deemed to have failed.
Needless to say in our time such things would not have happened, added Nodath.
Navy Cut Perera: Quite so .We bribed invigilators and took crib notes into the examinations hall. Others got seniors to impersonate them. It’s the fault of our alumni members not to have imparted such wisdom to their progeny.
Nodath: Order! Order! This is a very serious meeting. No need to repeat tales out of school.
Gong Thadiya: My son got distinctions in physics and chemistry last year. But if new results are released under the new syllabus this year he may be declared a failure.
Joker Poker: Ado, Gong, are you sure he is your son— Your son with distinctions in physics and chemistry? Wonder of wonders…
At this stage Gong T rolled up his sleeves and rushed up to Joker but members of the alumni restored sense and sanity.
Nodath Pandithaya  explained that Joker had not questioned paternity but  the issue whether they were results of Gong’s son or some one else.
Pick Pocket Silva announced that not only Gong’s son but his daughter too had distinctions in physics and chemistry.

An unidentified voice: Must be the mother’s brains.
Nodath appealed for old school rivalries to be held back and the more serious issue be discussed in earnest. For example the son of one member had obtained distinctions in chemistry and biology but the fellow had studied Sinhala and Pali right along. He can get selected to one of those research institutions because his parents are from the Deep South but how could he work on Lanka’s future Atomic Research Programme or programmes on controlling the Dengue mosquito?

Idiotic darlings

Pick Pocket Silva: We must be able to pull strings for our children and get them abroad. We know that the idiotic sons and daughters of the notable and quotable who can’t qualify to enter Lanka universities qualify in universities abroad—God knows in what—but when they come back home the papers bumming their Pappas and Mamas will say about the post graduate degrees the darlings have got in jurisprudence, rocket science work on the DNA etc.  Soon they will be in the UN system. The success of our children depends on how much we bum our rulers.
Navy Cut Perera: Even to enter fly- by –night universities abroad they will want the results of the GCE-AL but now with the Z Score interpretations they will throw out the applications into the WPB. Apart from entering universities abroad even to enter the Petti-Kade or Aluth Kade College, a good Z score is needed or so they say.

Computers and free bunnis

Viplawa  Singhe: I think, our generation has been taken for a walk by this so called IT. Every fellow who can get his mouth close to a microphone will be calling for the spread of  IT. Computers are given to school kids and all sundry like free bunnis in our time. What they are doing only the ruling clique will know. I always had suspicions about these magic boxes. Now they are used in counting votes. What for the telling, laughing also coming. All computer Jillmart, no? Even this Z score is supposed to be a computer Jillmart no? Some monkeys supposed to enter the scores of marked papers into computers have typed on wrong keys, they say.
Joker Poker: Like monkey drinking chillie water, no? Only thing is that those who are smarting from chillie water are our children and not the monkeys or their masters. IT for us is like monkeys on computers. Remember the CCTV at the Museum. It went off for a day or two and the monkeys were eating bananas while the rogues walked away with the antiques very coolly. How convenient. Cool baby cool as our kids say.
Pandang Pala: I say, you fellow are trying to stop the forward march of Sri Lanka towards the Miracle of Asia. How can you do away with IT in the modern world? In your good old days it was not computer error but clerical error. So why the  ho-ha now?

Remember the 3 Rs

Viplawa Singhe: Comrades, I think we are on the wrong track. For what purpose is this Z score? If your kid gets a good Z Score what happens? He or she enters the university and gets a degree. What can they do with a degree today—nothing. Join the Unemployed Graduates Association and fight the cops on the streets. For success comrades we know we got to know the 3 Rs—Mahinda, Gota and Basil or even  the two simple Rs knocking about  here and there  to be recognised. Forget the old 3Rs—Reading, writing and Arithmetic.  Forget the Tuition Master and the Hanguranketa Banda, they are like computers. They do what the 3 Big Rs punch into them. The 3Rs will decide what to do with the  Z original or revised. So forget the X.Y and Z and all other letters except the Big 3 Rs and pay obeisance to them.