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, God forbid, what is the unimaginable turmoil she goes through? He/she becomes an outcast, overnight, and friends and teachers don't want to touch the child with a barge pole. Parents berate the child and consider him/her the source of all their troubles. In short, the poor child's confidence and self-worth plummets, and it is doubtful whether this does not leave a lifelong scar.
We need to shift this focus from getting marks in examinations to overall learning and comprehension. Schools need to become all inclusive and nurture weak students as much as they treasure the high scorers. Parents need to realize that there is more to life than scoring tons of marks, and that each child is unique in some area or another. Society needs to accept the academically lagging students with open arms and treat them with respect.
Academic excellence is not the be all and end all of life. Please remember that brilliant students often fail to prove themselves later in life. Emotional well being and all round development are more worthwhile to survive in this complex world.
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, God forbid, what is the unimaginable turmoil she goes through? He/she becomes an outcast, overnight, and friends and teachers don't want to touch the child with a barge pole. Parents berate the child and consider him/her the source of all their troubles. In short, the poor child's confidence and self-worth plummets, and it is doubtful whether this does not leave a lifelong scar.
We need to shift this focus from getting marks in examinations to overall learning and comprehension. Schools need to become all inclusive and nurture weak students as much as they treasure the high scorers. Parents need to realize that there is more to life than scoring tons of marks, and that each child is unique in some area or another. Society needs to accept the academically lagging students with open arms and treat them with respect.
Academic excellence is not the be all and end all of life. Please remember that brilliant students often fail to prove themselves later in life. Emotional well being and all round development are more worthwhile to survive in this complex world.
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