A Case Against Exams
The Indian education system is based on a rigorous system of examination with the aim to test the ‘intelligence’ of a student. Which means that the student performing the best in these examinations should also be the most intelligent. The parents are happy if their kid performs good in the exams, thinking their kid is indeed intelligent and the teachers applaud the kid in a similar manner. The problem is this is hardly ever the case.
A person does not have be intelligent or smart to ace these exams. Just being average will do. That and some hard work. “Hard work for what?” — You ask. Hard work to adopt themselves to the pattern of the exam paper. Find some old question papers, determine the pattern of the questions, the topics which contribute most to the marks and memorize every bit about it. Yup, that’s it. That’s all one have to do to be considered intelligent by the current education system and the highly envious society.
And that’s exactly the problem with an education system based on examination — to ace it one does not have to “grow”, just change their approach so that it is in accordance to the questions asked in the exams.
It might seem like a small problem to begin with, but the consequences of this approach are huge and everlasting. But to understand these consequences, we must turn our attention to sports.
Sports is a highly competitive discipline. We can feel the thrill, the angst, the confidence, the over-confidence, the lack of confidence, the fun, the adrenaline pumping, the frustration with every shot in a cricket, every kick in football, every smash in badminton. Sportsperson give their all to win. They are competitive and want to win at all cost. It is this competition that brings out the best in every sportsperson that takes the field.
Examinations are competitive too. Every result defines a person. You do good in an exam, and everyone suddenly adores you, you flunk one, and everyone considers you are on the wrong track. Every marks count. Every minute counts. Everything counts. So much so that we would happily divest ourselves of our integrity and self-respect for a single mark. S, this competition must bring out the best in everyone. But it doesn’t.
It is often believed that it is the competitive nature of sports that attracts so many people to it. If that is so, why does education and examination does not do the same. Why does everyone hate going to school. Why is education boring. Why does the whole process of examination seem futile to every student. The answer — no one is ever attracted to competition. There’s something huge missing from our education system.
Co-operation. Every sport is competitive. But every sport is also co-operative. No team wins unless they “are a team”. Every player does his bit, helps the team, thinks about the team, thinks of the team as above self. They all co-operate. They act as a single unit. Even in most single-player sports, the players can take break to go talk to their coach, get advice. And then there are the supporters. Euphoric in their teams success and melancholy in defeat. The team, the players, they are never alone. And that’s a major missing from examination.
Examinations are competitive, and they should be in order to bring out the best in the student. But they are never co-operative. A student in an examination hall is always alone. The teacher, who is supposed to guide a student, acts as an adversary to the examinee.
No student can be comprehensibly evaluated by what he does in the about 3 hours of an examination. It is just impossible to gauge the abilities and skills acquired by anyone in such a small period of time without any kind of help. It often happens that a student forgets a formula or some weird value of a constant and is unable to solve a question. It does nor mean he can’t, it just means he needs a little help, like everyone of us do everyday.
Also, someone might be good at something but is never tested about it. Sometimes, we are just required to answer a question in a specific way, explicitly include details that are implicit in the answer or just use a certain method to solve a question when we can easily do it some other way. None of these things test out abilities or our intelligence. They are just meant to test how nicely we have accustomed ourselves to the examination pattern.
Even our day-to-day school works, we are supposed to do alone. And we have to do that without making nay mistakes. Mistakes are sin in our education system. So are copying from others. We are supposed to be original, as if, being original proves that we are better than others.
But societies don’t run on originality. Societies don’t run on competition. Or at least they should not. We depend on our family, our friends, our neighbors, even our government. We take help from them. Copy their solutions. Sometimes improve upon them, more often don’t. Our lives are not that of solitude and independence, but of co-dependence. But inside an examination hall, we are not co-dependent. We are told to see everyone as out competitor. And that is why we must scrap the examination system and replace it with something that reflects the way we should live our lives and our societies should progress.
But what?
Read my next post for the answer.
Abhinav

