Examinations Exert Pernicious Influence on Education

We might marvel at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a man’s knowledge and ability remains as primitive as ever they were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years’ revolution, educationists have still failed to devise anything more efficient and reliable than examinations.

Despite the entire pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they often do the exact opposite. They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a man’s true ability and aptitude.

As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none, since they are the keys for many things. They are the mark of success or failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother died. Little things like that don’t count: the exam goes on. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do.

The moment a child begins study, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. . Can we wonder at the increasing number of ‘drop-outs’: young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students?

A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memorize.

Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable student to seek more knowledge, but induce cramming (to study rapidly under pressure for an examination). They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedom. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. Therefore, in order to get high score, some students started to use spy-camera for cheating on examination.

The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress. The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. They also make mistakes when they get tired and hungry. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word is magnificent. After a judge’s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner’s.

There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways to assess a person’s true abilities. Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis.