Should Exam be Abolished?
Should exam be abolished? Is it necessary to have examination in the education system?
Throughout all these years, people have been debating and discussing this idea yet exam haven’t been done away with. In this modern world, exam has played an important role to the students, students were given test and examination since they get into kindergarten for education. Major popularity of Asian children had been educated that examination is the . This forces children to think that getting good grades in examination, being enrolled in a prestigious university and having a decent job is the definition of what we called “successful”.
Over-emphasis of examination in today’s education system has cause a lot of tragedy, such as suicide among teenagers. Exam should be abolished because it is mentally and physically threatening the students, exam have caused a lot of suicide case among students and it makes students stressed out and have low confidence in themselves, exam is just a test of memorizing and it does not define any of the students.
Examinations have brought a huge effect towards students’ health and mental issues. It made children examination-conscious. Students find it hard to cope with because of the over-emphasis on exam results in the “pressure cooker environment” these days, says Rod Bristow (2015). Because of exam, parents expect and pressure too much on their kids, forcing them to attend lots of tuition classes after school which left them no relaxation and recreational activities. This causes students are always racing to catch up with their schedule from one subject to another, from one tuition center to another. Extra classes mean extra homework, students devote most of their time to their studies. Students who do not want to disappoint their parents tend to stress out and force themselves to study very hard. During exam eve, most of the students stay up late to study, some of them can’t even sleep because they are too stressed.
Ann Pietrangelo (2017) said, “Human find it harder to fall asleep or stay asleep because of stress and stress also lead to insomnia.” They are often in a state of tension and anxiety. When a child lives with toxic stress, the chances of having depression, involving in abuse, violence or smoking is greatly higher. Annu Rev Clin (1989) reported that stress often leads to a depressed life. This shows that too much pressure on the student lead to depression, students who could not take the stress anymore eventually took their own life at an early age. According to Jackie Burell (2018), rate of suicide case among teenagers had increased from years to years and suicide has become the second most common reason of death among students.
Exam should be abolished because it is unfair. Advanced technology these days allow students to cheat in exams easily. Students could try every trick to cheat in the exam to get a good result. Students who cheated without getting caught could get good grades effortlessly while the others have to squeeze their brain juice to get good grades. If anyone who cheated can get good grades, then why do we still have exam in the education system? Then, there are students who have done well mainly because they have spotted the right questions. Such students have shown no consistency in their studies but have resulted in spotting questions on the eve of their examinations. How then, can exams be a good criterion for accessing one’s actual knowledge or capability.
There is also an over-emphasis on examinations in our education system. This sets in motion a rat-race, for our country has come to recognize that examinations are the passport to success in life. Thus, a student who fails in examination is discriminated against by a prospective employer. Many people have failed to understand that the same students who have done well in class tests have done badly in government examinations mainly because of severe illness or other disturbing events such as the death of someone in their family.
” People fail examination because of environment, social, economic factors not mainly because they are stupid, ” said Benson Okello (2015). Besides that, schools nowadays categorized the students by looking into their results, those who do well would be placed in the first class and they will get special treatment like extra classes and attention from teachers while those who do badly in exam would just be ignored. Cher Hendrick (2013) made a scientific investigation and proved that the marking papers is subjective, for example: different teachers when working independently tend to assign widely varying marks to the same paper.
Exam is just a test of memorizing. Students should not be defined by examinations, just because they don’t do well in exam does not mean they are stupid. People often defined people by looking into their results, students who do well would be praised while students who don’t will be looked down and labelled as stupid. “Examination is not a true test for knowledge, it tests nothing but students’ ability to memorize and fulfill the desires of examiners and limit the creativity of students,” said by Benson Okello (2015).
Exam cannot test how intelligence is a student because exam only require student to study what teacher teach and write according to the concept of the books. Just because they have good memory, does not mean that they are brilliant. Most of the students will only remember things they studied for a short period of time and once the exam is over, they will forget everything they memorized. Anjum Khan (2017) said, “Exam questions that are only based on the school syllabus has actually no direct relationship with the real life situations which students face in everyday life.” The element of fear or shame is also put in the students who do badly in their examinations. If they do badly, they are condemned. Students like these, who face such condemnation, may develop a hatred towards their studies.
Some may even resort to disastrous actions. Furthermore, young children who should be engaged in creative and healthy activities are all the time forced to confine themselves to their books and lessons. Young children suffering from anxiety nowadays because they are being sent to school at a tender age and this tackle exam stress reported by Anushka Asthana(2007). What is even appalling is that children are exposed to examinations at a very tender age when they do not know much about the significance of examinations.
Exam should be abolished because intelligent cannot be defined by result, exam is just a test of testing students’ ability to memorize things. Peter Tait (2018) says that by defining intelligence through examination, we have lose a lot of talented people. Exam is unfair to those students who work hard but still couldn’t achieve good grades while the others achieve easily because they have good memory or they cheated but does not get caught. Exam also become the weapon of parents to show off their kid’s result to their friends or relatives. Some of the parents compare their kid’s results to the other kids and end up putting their kids into a state of depression. In conclusion, exam should be abolished because putting students into a classroom for hours just to complete sheets of paper does not define who we are and who we are to be in the future.
