Saturday

THANKS FOR COMING :)


Changing Exam Patterns

1995: answer all questions
2000: answer any five
2005: write either a or b
2015:ONLY read the question
2020:THANKS FOR COMING!!!:)

Thanks to Iceman for the thought provoking sms.


Padma Bhushan Mr.Yash Pal seems to have suggested
a mind-numbing(literally) idea of scrapping exams.And
Mr.Sibal is playing "race against time" in trying to
implement the mind-numbing idea in just 100 days.

Like the adage goes "pain is inevitable but suffering
is optional" and hence making exams optional!!!Excellent !
just satisfies the law of nature.

But what makes Mr.Sibal think that kids are pressurised
and in his words "traumatised" by exam is something vastly
beyond rugged comman sense!

The obverse is being conviniently overlooked.
kids are not pressurised by exams but by the famine
of oppurtuties in our nation.A lot of them cant deal
with the consequences of exams more than exams.

I hope a proper discourse
goes into this or he will have to come up with an equally effective way of gauging
a students capabilities,by which it doesnt remotely mean that exams ensure fine minds!!

8 comments:

Iceman said...

Indian kids like any other kid in the world hate exams, but they are the best when it comes to facing them.

With millions of students, there are bound to be kids of all sorts, even those who are terribly fearful of exams. They end up taking harsh steps. But they should not be taken as an example in place of many other children who face exams with ease.


Scrapping exams will be fatal in the long run.

Anusha said...

What exactly is Mr.Sibal planning to gauge students with if he scrapes exams? Instead of scraping exams,he could work on having more subjects included in the curriculum such that each student has the option of choosing the subject of his choice.This would encourage students to pick their fields of interest at a much earlier phase,making them focused at their stream.
Providing a wider range of opportunities would be a better solution than uprooting exams entirely.

Honestly,who gave him the idea anyway?

Gecko said...

The exam, as it is today i high school, college or engineering, is really not an exam, it's just a measure of the ability of a person to "break the system". Cracking the exam is the only objective, not testing the knowledge gained in the entire year or half, just the ability to vomit stuff swallowed the previous two days. What's the use in having an exam in java or fluid mechanics, when you can't write a proper program or design a proper pipe?
The entire teaching system, the pedagogy, is oriented more to cracking exams, homework and volume, than quality or content or application of stuff being taught. it's business, big business and big money!
That's not how they assess people in other countries, everything goes in counting the final marks of the student, attendance to class, behavior, attitude, interest and many such things. As far as I've seen my cousins in the US, they love going to school! and frankly, they're a lot more creative and also a lot more intelligent than the same people of our age, who, sadly, can not do much than say multiplication tables from 1 to 20, backwards! It's a sad state!

Anusha said...

wake up rubs!
feed your blog!!!

Suree said...

2030 : No need to come ....

2050: No education, no schools, learn by urself...

Anusha said...

Get back to blogosphere! Wake up! You've been hibernating for a year

All Is Whole said...

"pain is inevitable but suffering
is optional"

liked this one...

Smiles :)
Prashant

Unknown said...

Hmmm..clever discourse on what seems to have been evaluated as a humanitarian issue(if not a mind numbing one...pun intended).I think we need to broaden our vision a bit and think of the kids from poor families(read rural and slum) for whom exam is quite literally a trauma.This can be due to lack of proper channelising as you have mentioned but also due to the fact that they,less than any other kid in the country learn for fun.To them learning specialy with mediocre teachers,bad infrastructure and rote metods can be quite a nightmare and exams an extended hell.I dont in any way support removing exams and ofcourse a more serious discourse into pedagogy is required to determine the exact type of exam which will benefit students.Exams are what make students competitive and any country which had done away with them (read US and UK)has not have a very good progress in the field of formal education.But competition is not something that is intended to make somebody so edgy that they contemplate suicidebefore or after their board results...case in point recent spate of suicides in Maharashtra due to parental expectations and exam pressure.There may be many pscychological reasons most of which we avoid discussing because it is easy to make the EXAM and the BOARD scapegoats,but a thorough overhaul of the whole education system is required.