This is a wonderful article I read about exams..
Dear Students,
As a teacher I am aware of the tensions and difficulties many of you are going through now.You have been studying hard, probably going to tuition classes and are worrying about getting enough marks in exams.For a moment I wish to draw your attention to different perceptions.Suppose for a moment that your pricipal,teachers and parents were to say :
My Child, what marks you get are the least bit important.In a short time when you grow up, no one will be looking at the marks you are worrying so much about.To us you are important and not what marks you get.You may think this strange,but let me tell you why we think this.
We are all born in this world to learn important lessons, probably the most important being to learn “an unselfish way of living”(E.F. Schumacher in GOOD WORK). To learn to share, to care and not to always occupied with what one feels and what one wants. It is important to be cheerful and calm to meet the challenges that each one of us will surely encounter.
A LIFE TIME OF LEARNING
The new century has unfolded and an explosion of knowledge and opportunity is taking place.You will be required in your work life to learn— to learn from books,from machines such as computers, from people around you. Wherever you work you will be required to learn — and in this journey of learning no one is going to be concerned with what your marks were in school, in science or history or language or mathematics.
In the magical time of the lifelong learner it is not important where one begins — you can begin anywhere, wherever you are, with little or with more. Now, as a student if you are able to understand that life is a long journey ahead, it does not matter too much if you have great marks now or if you do not.Do you know in our country you can miss the school exam at standards X and XII and directly write the B.A or B.Sc exam through open university after you cross 18? You can also miss the B.A.,B.Sc. exam and directly write the M.A or M.Sc exam when you are 25.If this is possible for all of us why are we so bothered about what marks we get in a school exam? No one can take away your right to write an exam and qualify yourself irrespective of the marks you get.
We have all been told that to get into a good school or college you need to get good marks. If that is the so we have to be in a good college in all life, because we have to be life long learners. If we believe, as we have all been told, that a good school or college is the only way of learning, then we are really stuck, because life is not a college. Are you able to work with people— some may be friends and some others may think very differently? Do you know how to respect all around you.
THE RIGHT WAY
Probably now you begin to see why to us as the marks you are given by someone far away, based on the written answers, are not so important.Mr. P.K. Srinivasan once said that “it is wrong for a teacher to set a test for a student if the student is not going to learn something from the test”. As a teacher I see the profound sense of this statement and I hope as a student you share this appreciation.
Mankind has its immaturities — one of them is the notion that unless people write exams they cannot “progress”. Ask 10 people around you, those whom you consider successful, what marks they got in school.If you find that most have got poor marks, will you refuse to believe in the power of exam marks? It is unfortunate that even those who did not get high marks in school fervently believe that this is the right way to go ahead.Can we respect and value each other and not through marks?
It may be interesting for you to know that the Government of our country has been pressing the exam Boards to get rid of pass/fail in the exams but to be able to say what the student can do.Your children, when they go to school, will not have the anxiety and tensions that you are facing.
But, as student who have thinking brains, I hope you see the sense of what is said here and refuse to be tense or anxious. I wish that you will be happy to know that there are people in the world who value you for who you are and not for the marks you get.I wish that this is the gift you will be able to give to the people around you, now and in later life.
I have a hope in writing this piece.My hope is that students who read it will be able to write their exams peacefully, and that they will avoid the hopelessness and pain during the exam period. I wish and hope that many young students, like you, if you are reading this, will not hand over your sense of well being to the faceless examiner and that you will enter the exam hall humming a cheerful tune and come out the same way.
