Exam: The God

Illustration by ChatGPT

The ultimate purpose of schooling is to score well in the final exam. That defeats the entire vision of education.

When I left Delhi and joined a school, a highly reputed one, in Kerala where I chose to settle down in the autumn of my life, one of the first things I did in the classroom was to stop dictating notes on lessons. The parents were worried. The principal, a very efficient administrator with extraordinarily clear views on whatever concerns the school, cautioned me. “We have a reputation for most of our students scoring A1 (the highest grade) in English,” he said implying that such a result owed to the teacher-given notes which the students reproduced in the answer sheets.  

What use is teaching language that way? That was my question. Language is a means for self-expression. And that has to be done in each student’s own style. How will that style develop unless they write their own answers? I was fortunate that the principal chose to place his trust in me in this regard. His trust was rewarded when the results came at the end of the session. Many of the parents were surprised too.

My students weren’t surprised. They knew they would do well. Because I had ensured that the lessons went deep into their consciousness. There were meaningful discussions in the class where every student was free to express their views openly and freely even if the view was not quite socially acceptable. Occasionally this did get me into trouble. Some parents objected to certain discussions that took place in the class and complained to the principal who cautioned me again as gently as he could. He knew that I was doing the right thing, but I had to remember also that I was teaching in a village school.  

The long and short of this is that you can teach without keeping the terrifying hum of the exam’s “winged chariot” in the back of the student’s consciousness all the time. Exam need not be a terror at all. On the contrary, it can be fun. It depends on how you prepare your student for that.

Of course, I’m aware of the demands of the contents – I dealt with this in the last post. I was lucky to be an English teacher and CBSE’s English syllabus is quite frivolous. The good side of that is it gives the teacher ample time to play with it. The point is that the teachers of the other subjects should get that luxury too. Then the game will change. Rather, learning will become a game, not a mad rush towards exams.

What the National Education Policy of 2020 tried to do was to make the assessment more meaningful and less stressful. But in practice, it made it just the opposite – with endless evaluation processes in various names like formative assessment and competency-based assessment. The progress card of each student has now to provide a holistic, 360-degree view of a learner’s progress, including self-assessment, peer assessment, and teacher assessment. [For details: NEP 4.34-4.42] The upshot of all this is that the teacher’s burden multiplied manifold and the student’s standard has deteriorated. Marks are given generously in the name of internal assessments and other such labels. Students are happy. And hollow. [I will be dealing with the hollowness too in another post.]

A three-hour exam decides in the end what a student has achieved from the 14 years he spent at school [from LKG to Grade 12]. How absurd! The internal assessment scores and the practical exam scores don’t mean anything, I tell you. I know what I’m speaking about. It is humanly impossible to carry out all the tasks given to teachers in the NEP and so teachers make it easy by awarding the best possible scores to their students in the internal assessments.

Exam scores don’t mean anything much.

A whole range of dimensions slip through answer scripts.

Does our assessment system ever check a student’s curiosity that leads them beyond their textbooks?

Does it ever care for the student’s ethical reasoning and empathy?

Has it ever encouraged a student to ask uncomfortable questions?

What happens to a student’s creativity that does not fit the marking schemes?

The depth of understanding that every genuine and intelligent student hankers after is smothered brutally by our assessment systems. And we create shallow citizens who can’t even stand the stress of a bad result of an examination, let alone face the challenges of life!

Does any examination today measure how a student listens, doubts, connects ideas, or changes their mind? Does any board of education care to find out the integrity of a student or their imagination?

The qualities that actually shape an individual – and ultimately the society – are never assessed.

A group of teachers who know how to reach certain high positions in the board of education decide what is “important” for the exams and guide books are written by them. Teachers and students follow those guide books. Because exams are the ultimate purpose of education!

Education has become a transaction. All the noble objectives of NEP won’t ever be achieved as long as we don’t change the evaluation system. What you test is what is fostered. Current testing doesn’t go beyond memory tests. Current testing exchanges marks for recall. And marks bring in all the approvals.

Something sacred is lost in the process.

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