I guess I've already said it a few times how I don't believe in exams. How I don't think exams are the proper calibrating tool to recognise intelligence. And reading Zayn's blog about made me think that I should take a deeper look into it in my blog.
Obviously, I still don't believe in it. Nothing's changed about that. So basically here instead of dropping a line on a blog about school, I'll write an entry specifically about exams.
First of all, I don't believe in exams not out of spite. I'm not being whiney about it. It's not the immature hate that people have for exams. It's a sincere disbelief and lack of trust of exams as a means of properly cultivating intellectual discussions, promoting academic excellence and a reliable system of intelligent calibration.
There a few points to make to support this view of exams as a negative and counter-productive tool for education:
- Like in the British education system, and in the Brunei education system, school life and the education in it is aimed very narrowly at trying to pass exams to go on to the next level, whether it to be the next grade, university or well-earning job. The main focus is to get the sufficient grades to have a better career. This isn't really a bad thing, but that is the bonus of education, not the main point of it. Education is a means of improving society by stimulating intellectual discussion about issues that concern society. It is also a means of educating oneself to prepare for the real life, for practical things. Not just facts and numbers.
- The amount of work to be done to prepare for exams are enormous. All for one paper that can determine what your next step will be. It does not take into account anomalies, the inconsistency of candidates. It does not take into account that one day can make a difference between an A-grade (or 1st) and B-grade (2nd). Illness, depression, state of mind. All can change in a few hours. By using a coursework-oriented course, such inconsistencies can be evened out over the space of a few weeks or months.
- The amount of fact-memorising is ridiculous. As one person pointed out, even professionals refer to books. Professionals. Then why do students, out of all people, have to remember obscure facts, numbers and names that in the course of their actual career can be easily referred to by using a book?
- The system is easily abused through fact-regurgitating. A person that can remember things very, very well might benefit from such a flawed system. Yet an intelligent person who has trouble remembering stuff might be crippled by such a system's dependency on fact-regurgitation.
There is a reason why sometimes I feel revision is a waste of time.
Signing out
Over and out
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