Why exams suck !

I do feel a bit guilty about writing this because of the personal gain I’m going to achieve, namely being able to rant to someone about the current situation I and most of my friends are in and let out a deep sigh of relief.

The word that goes synonymously (and somewhere far beyond I’m sure!) with school is exam. Children start facing exams from pre-school these days! (I was luckier :) ) Are we doing the right thing by designing our school systems like this? There are so many things wrong at so many levels about the way we go about conducting exams that I’m sure I’ll be able to pen down only a few.

First of all, the thing that is most associated with examinations is fear. Your classmates start whispering when the date of an exam is announced as if some great epidemic is at near quarters, not even slightly better, the teachers announce it with a grim look or sometimes a sadistic smile which says ‘let’s see who is the boss!’ From the very beginning succeeding in exams becomes a way of evaluating yourself because a lot of people you see like some of your classmates or your teachers evaluate you on the basis of these. We are conditioned to fear getting bad results, not remembering stuff and not writing stuff very well.

Why do we need this unnecessary measuring stick glued to our back always? You fear the exams because you are not going to be evaluated on what you have actually learned. If that was the case there would be no studying for the exam, you just go and write it. But you cram, you wish you were dead and swallow up some more and put it all out on the paper next day. It is always a race against time and resources. Now does this sound like a very valid way of learning things? Are the current exams actually a substitute for good, student involved learning which would take place continuously rather than on the day before the exam? This way at least, the knowledge would become a part of our daily lives.

There is always a need to test someone before you let them do something, which most of the time for their own good and surrounding people. But we are becoming so tuned to this business that we see only exams, we learn before our exams to get marks, end up getting a degree or a diploma or a PG or any other variety of these without actually giving any shit about what we are doing, what does it mean in a bigger picture or how does it actually work out in the real life. Exams becomes milestones which you have to get through to get on with your life.

They stop serving the actual purpose of letting you evaluate yourself, without any fear or judgment so as to improve your knowledge or skill. It just becomes a way of comparing people and grouping them. What is this business of having one big exam at the end of the year? Does the depth of your knowledge have to be assessed on a single day? What if you flip out and screw it?

This is in some way taking away taking away the freedom from the person writing the exam, threatening to put their dreams/careers on hold unless they do well on a paper. It is like holding a stick in their face, always. Because of the same reason, exams become valuable in another way. It is only after you realize that you need not be afraid of these that you became truly aware of your capability to move forward in life. I personally enjoy writing exams, but also have faced a lot personal stress because of them. There is nothing like a great exam to make you feel you are in fact good  and nothing like a bad exam to make you feel you suck.