Learning is a treasure, which accompanies its owner everywhere but as every divided kingdom falls every mind divided between loads of studies confounds and saps itself like a dried leaf on the stalk. “The Present Examination System is an unfair means to judge the students’ potential. “ True. Absolutely true. I find the present examination system incapable of judging a student’s actual talent.
The worst thing about examinations is that you’re never quite ready for them as day by day the tension rises which leads to the messing up of all your past preparations. A day before the exam, students get literally hassled ending up with the destruction of an entire year’s study going through sleepless nights with all efforts in vain. Coming to the examination halls, before the distribution of the question papers, however well you are prepared, there is a slight flutter of butterflies in ... your stomach which makes you nervous. Believe it or not... A student’s worst moments of his school life occur before the distribution of the question papers on the day of the exam.
Today’s system of testing students is devoid of practical in which the application of what you are learning is more important. It gives total importance to studies and not to other activities due to which not all students are able to perform their best. Once a student is sent to school, this system burdens and pressurizes him with loads of books, which bore him and finally he ends up by hearting or should I say mugging up the entire stuff which is of no use. I’m sure it is difficult for most of you to believe that 57.9 % of the school folks jot down answers in mind and desire to regurgitate them onto their answer sheets before they tend to forget. So it’s only your memory and the teacher’s summary that is being evaluated. Are exams introduced to check how well you can by heart an answer or how high is your mugging up capacity? The so-called “fair” system now through money, gives a positive sign to those who come prepared to the examination hall to cheat. These days, a middle-class student works as hard as possible putting in full effort to get through the examinations whereas just a blink of an eye is enough to get a spoilt brat of a rich family clear his hurdles! In a way, this system is also responsible for widening the gulf of relation between the teachers and the taught. Now - a - days we get to hear cases of students stabbing invigilators to death because they aren’t allowed to copy in the examination halls. Where are those values that respect, those close, intimate and compassionate relations between the students and their tutors which once existed? Where are they today? Means of examination never prevailed in the olden times, but teachers were still regarded as God and judged their pupils according to the real values to be attained to be fit in every walk of life. The best example for this is probably Rabrindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan. But today as a result of the systems introduced, the students turn to the materialized forms of knowledge rather than spiritual ones. Education is not to be received but to be achieved (though we can never stop learning), achieved through the curiosity of knowledge and not a few sheets with words dipped in ink. Imagine...a brilliant student who has been the top scorer in each field throughout the year faces some disheartening circumstances due to which he can’t appear for the final exams which results in the repetition of an year filled with embarrassment, humiliation and feeling of guilt for a crime which was never committed. Those three hours sum up the entire hard work of so many days destroying his destiny, his career, his everything! This disappointing truth has broken up many hearts of hope in the students and they’re never able to come up in life as their confidence is shattered and individuality in pieces. People who oppose me might state that good marks come out of hard work and they are essential for achieving a good position in life. But it’s not marks that are evaluated after a “three hours” theoretical fight that decide for a “good” doctor or a “good” engineer. What if he proves misfit in the society? Where does he land with 100 upon 100? Today where are those ethics, the oaths that each individual promises before taking up the responsibility of his job? A doctor’s success can make a face smile but at the same time, a minor mistake of his can finish a thousand lives. We say that the real aim of education is to train up a child in such a way that when he crosses the age, he doesn’t depart from it. Is this aim worked upon anywhere in this examination system? Changing topics, today there exists a need of examinations to check which student is apt for a seat. Out of 5000 students, probably just 1500 get seats, that too through the power of money and the remaining who are actually the owners, the hard workers land with a handful of sand! When a scorer of above 90% waits outside without a seat, at the same time a student with 90, 000’s in hand but hardly anything in head enters through the backyard. So where lies the potentiality of the child? This, I hope has revealed that the present examination system is an incapable one to analyze the calibur, the efficiency and ability of an individual and has to be replaced as soon as possible.
-Ruchi