Written by: Riya Jha - 21134, Grade XI
Posted on: 18 March, 2020
Every students’ heart is pounding as fast as it can, as you know, EXAMS are coming. Everything gets wrapped up; the plans for the weekends are being canceled, no child is seen on the playground, everyone forgot about the movie released, no gatherings are happening now and all they do is stick to their chairs and start revising things with fear. Half fear about not getting good scores even after they prepared so much and the remaining fear whether the invigilator is going to allow them to do any of their criminal activities inside the exam hall or will they manage to copy from their friends and so it goes on, and examination fever (examine-phobia) is they all suffer from.
The temperature increases as the exams approach near. Even after a good preparation, the examinee thinks as if he never learned anything in the whole year. And finally, on the day of examination, the examinee tries to go over answers only and prays to God to make everything proper. Now when he receives the question paper, his mind gets blocked and his pen gets stopped which gives him a feeling as if everything blew out suddenly from his mind and now all he knows is- Nothing.
Even after the exam the fever doesn’t go away but haunts the student every night with evil dreams about failing the exam. After the result gets published, he fears to face his parents, relatives and his friends who will go to the next grade but not him. All he can do now is make excuses regarding his failure like- there might be something wrong with the examiner or maybe my extra answer sheets didn’t get attached properly. This becomes a painful situation for everyone.
It is believed that examinations are held for evaluating students’ performance, their mental ability, and knowledge. Examinations make students work harder. They will fear failure which will also help them know their capacity and they can get placed accordingly into different careers. But examinations are only a gift from the British rule.
I personally dislike the idea about the examination system of our country where exams encourage cramming rather than true and appropriate knowledge. When I am in the examination hall, I feel like a worker in a factory who gets instructed to do the exact required things for a given time limit, obeying the rule for specific hours. A year of hard work and knowledge and there is a 3-hour test which is enough for your life damage. All your rote learning for a year goes in vain. Yes, ‘rote learning’ is the appropriate word I find to describe the effort of a student of our country in terms of learning. I find many of my friends getting good grades even if they never understood anything and that is for a short period of time but what about getting good scores in the real-life examination?
I would not go against the idea of taking examinations but surely against the system of approaching examinations. Every single person pressurizing individuals for rote learning is responsible for the suicide attempt of thousands of students every year whose dreams are stolen under the pressure of exams, for those who are dying of examination fever!
