Exams - The touchstone of worth?
Much has been said about changing the education system in India, but the ground realities have not changed even slightly. Till today, we have the learning by rote system, and regular examinations to test how much one can learn by mugging up or memorizing. The focus is still on how much a child can score using his/her memory and not any other factor. Native intelligence, every child's strength and individual qualities, all these are blissfully ignored in the this rat race to earn more and more marks. Schools may give lip service to all-round development of a child, but ultimately they felicitate those with the highest marks. Academic brilliance, rather the ability to score more numbers, is the single most important criteria of evaluating a child's worth in most schools. What about average students? What about slow learners? No one thinks about them, as they are pushed and forced to earn marks to prove their worth. If a child fails to pass her exams or has to repeat a year