Our education system is extremely messed up with the way memory tests are given so much importance over the practical application of everything we are being taught. What really are exams, and why are we even giving these tests, to begin with? Where did they even come from? Who decided that this was a great way to check someone’s intelligence or capability? Exams do not test anything but someone’s capability to memorize stuff. They are not an accurate representation of a person’s intelligence.
I mean, a simple bad day could result in an awful paper; I remember in my first semester, I screwed up one course simply because of a bad day, my grade dived from an A- to a C+. This didn’t mean I was not a good student who didn’t know anything about this course. It simply meant I had a bad enough day that I failed my final.
A Great Way To Assess
“Exams and tests are a great way to assess what the students have learned with regards to particular subjects. Exams will show what part of the lesson each student seems to have taken the most interest in and has remembered,” said one particular website that does not understand that there are people who do not do well on exams because of many reasons, one of the many being test anxiety. You know what kind of exams one should take? The ones that figure out someone’s personality or something that would determine how well one would do in a particular field. We learn pretty much everything till high school from the surface level, never deep enough to become invested or interested in it.
What Exams Really Are…
An exam where only the “naturally” talented kids perform well isn’t a show of other kids being dumb; it can also mean that the teacher cannot teach. Why does the blame rest on the students? I understand that exams are a necessary evil, but they are simply evil. In Pakistan’s case or even IBA, exams are a way to measure a child’s worth. This does not even make sense. A student who is interested in Literature flunks Mathematics. For example, he is a bad student if he fails a subject he does not even like. One more reason why assessments are not that great is that teachers believe any medium can take any exam. I have given Statistics tests on the LMS portal, where we had to write formulas and work by using words, something we have never been taught to do. I mean, come on.
In The End…
Exams conducted the way they are in our education is not necessary. We shouldn’t be rote learning mathematical formulas as if when we pursue that field, we have to absolutely remember what the Pythagoras Theorem is (I know this formula, and I have never applied it, ever). Students shouldn’t be suffering from depression or anxiety during “exam season,” this shouldn’t something scary or something that keeps us all night. There are different ways to conduct exams that are helpful to students. For example, take-home exams for theory-based courses where students need to research and study on their own, or problem-solving exams for practical courses like Accounting and Statistics. Students should know the why and the how of the course and there’s that.
Lastly, you know what else is wrong with Exams, the fact that they exist in the first place.
Sincerely,
an SSLA student who wants to tell everyone that take-home exams are much harder and take longer to respond.
2 thoughts on “Exams and Everything Wrong With Them.”
Agreed especially with take-home exams taking more time but teachers here are giving even less time for them, giving an excuse that we’ll Google answers. And those teacher’s whole lecture slides and questions are plagiarized, ironic.
I’m glad to see this conversation brought up in the air so nicely, yet at the same time it is so irritating and frustrating to see the level of ignorance around, we as students and teachers all know how bad of a way it is, yet still we follow, why? Everyone’s quiet then. Plus everyone these days has “whats” and “whens”, except for the “whys” that eventually leads to “hows”, but anyways let’s prepare for finals, to get an A, which we all know isn’t of no value in deeper sense.