Exams, bleargh.
I've been buried under assignments and have finally emerged, extremely sleep-deprived and grouchy, from the pile of textbooks. Next: exams April 17-19. ARRRGGGGHHHHH.
Have I ever mentioned that I hate exams? I do, with every fibre of my being. I think they're torture devices. I also think that they're lousy methods of assessment.
Firstly, you make people memorise stuff that they will never have to remember once they graduate and go out into the working world. I mean, come on. 70% of the things I had to memorise for exams in law school, I would not need to remember if I were a practising lawyer. I'd be able to look them up if I ever needed to. What is the point of making me remember them just to write a three-hour exam?
Secondly, it's a poor indicator of learning because everybody ends up "studying" to pass exams, and not to learn anything. 40% of the stuff I write in exams, I forget two weeks down the road. Exams are not indicators of learning or absorption. Or at least, not in my experience. They're indicators of how well we've managed to spot the questions, or how successful we're been in cramming the information into our brains within the month before exams (in some cases, the week before the exams!). Under the Malaysian education system, we even learn how to write all the right things, sometimes without knowing what they mean. I still can't believe I actually passed Physics.
Thirdly, it is artificial because it takes place in a contrived, high-pressure environment. Apart from job interviews, I can't think of anything else in life that creates this kind of do-or-die atmosphere. You have that one chance to prove yourself, and if you mess up, you're out. People blank out during exams, or fall ill on that day and underperform.
Fourthly, exams are based on the assumption that everyone is cut from the same mould. I'm well aware that we can't have different kinds of assessments for different people; it would create nightmares for the administrative section of the school or college or university. But when you make everyone take a written examination, some are probably not going to shine -- through none of their own fault. There are people who hate writing, yet you make them sit down in a crowded hall and write essays for three hours. They aren't very eloquent on paper, but if you were to sit down to have lunch with them, they could talk for hours on the subject. Others are hampered by a language barrier and struggle to express themselves in a second language.
Fifthly, this pass-and-fail thing... it makes people unnecessarily competitive, kiasu (afraid to lose out) and terrified of failure. Failure is now a bad word because if you fail, it means you are stupid -- or, within my family, lazy -- and these are very bad things to be. Instead of looking at failure as a chance to learn from mistakes, or a sign that some things (study methods, perhaps) need to change, failure is taken personally, and considered the student's fault. I will blame this one on parents. Parents have made it not okay for their children to fail, or even to obtain anything other than top results. Parents are the ones who push their children to perform, and because of this, children feel like less than nothing when they do not obtain the expected results. I have known parents who treat a B as if it were a failure; nothing but an A will do.
So now you know: I detest exams. Unfortunately I gotta live with them. Sigh.