The torture of examinations
The annual rigmarole of final examinations is on us once again. Look around you, and you will find students crazily cramming up facts, figures and formulas, and parents nervously egging them on. As for teachers, they compete with each other on how many questions they can squeeze in an examination paper. After all, each minute detail of the syllabus is important, and needs to be reproduced on paper. That's how they have been trained by our education policy makers and school authorities.
One thing is certain in the Indian education system: Much as we crib and curse the examination system and rote learning, they are here to stay for a long time. Because no one is willing to risk on experimenting with an alternative system of assessing students or evaluating real learning. It is too much hard work - overhauling the entire system, sensitizing policy makers, retraining school principals and teachers, counselling parents, and preparing students alternately. Who has the time or inclination to do all that hard work?
So let the present system continue and produce mediocre talent. Let us be a nation of rote learners, not original thinkers. Let us force-feed students crazy amounts of information to be ingested and thrown up in examination halls, and promptly forgotten thereafter. Even in this day and age of easily available knowledge and information, let us still tax the poor child's memory and rote learning powers. And let them fill reams of paper painstakingly that later land up with the raddiwalla as trash.
Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda had suggested alternate systems of education and learning approaches in that time and age, but not a single Indian leader in today's India is interested in thinking of an alternative to the present examination system. The future and career of millions are decided by these examinations, yet no improvements have taken place in making the system more relevant or up-to-date. No emphasis on life skills, only on academic knowledge. Sad, but true.
One thing is certain in the Indian education system: Much as we crib and curse the examination system and rote learning, they are here to stay for a long time. Because no one is willing to risk on experimenting with an alternative system of assessing students or evaluating real learning. It is too much hard work - overhauling the entire system, sensitizing policy makers, retraining school principals and teachers, counselling parents, and preparing students alternately. Who has the time or inclination to do all that hard work?
So let the present system continue and produce mediocre talent. Let us be a nation of rote learners, not original thinkers. Let us force-feed students crazy amounts of information to be ingested and thrown up in examination halls, and promptly forgotten thereafter. Even in this day and age of easily available knowledge and information, let us still tax the poor child's memory and rote learning powers. And let them fill reams of paper painstakingly that later land up with the raddiwalla as trash.
Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda had suggested alternate systems of education and learning approaches in that time and age, but not a single Indian leader in today's India is interested in thinking of an alternative to the present examination system. The future and career of millions are decided by these examinations, yet no improvements have taken place in making the system more relevant or up-to-date. No emphasis on life skills, only on academic knowledge. Sad, but true.
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