The Neurotic World of Exam-centric Education !!

In India, education right from primary to high school is exam -centric. The whole purpose of teaching - the complete focus is on how well the child performs in tests and exams.

This ‘marks focused’ approach of everyone involved, disregards many issues and problems that are deeply embedded and are interconnected with each other. Consequently children bear the brunt of these shortcomings. They are the victims of the faulty system.

The most important issues that need to be taken care of urgently are-

·        The problem of bilingualism ….the constant struggle of the children to cope with a foreign language along with the course material needs to be dealt with.

·        Teachers are grossly underpaid, untrained and inadequately qualified. Where is the motivation for teachers to do their job with honesty?

·        The suitability of a person as teacher is never questioned. Do they really have the aptitude or interest in teaching? 

Obviously, if these deep rooted problems are so blatantly ignored, it certainly puts a question mark on the quality of teaching in schools.

        We need to reflect and ask ourselves ……are we in a position to assess the children? Are we giving them a fair chance to develop their full potential, the favorable conditions to exhibit their abilities?

        It has to be accepted that exams cannot be completely done away with – at least in the present scenario. In fact they do have their usefulness and purpose if taken in the right perspective.

·        Tests and examinations should be utilized by teachers to evaluate their own teaching. It tells them whether they have succeeded in their job. Have the children grasped the concepts and understood whatever is taught? Which areas need to be reinforced? Which topics should be revised etc.?

·        Examinations help in mapping the progress of a child. The amount of improvement in the child can be seen through the comparison of his previous performance with the latter one.

·        It needs to be reiterated that each child is a different individual with different levels of intelligence, different family backgrounds and different life experiences. Hence it is absolutely wrong to compare one child’s performance to the other.

·        We need to encourage children to try their best, put in efforts and show consistent improvement.

·        In pursuing higher studies, children have to face the outside world and deal with tremendous competition. School examinations should prepare them for all this. Examinations also teach children to deal with failure. This can only happen when parents, teachers and children do not take success or failure in one examination as the be all and end all !

·        Examinations provide one an opportunity to reflect o one’s weaker areas and how to strengthen them.

What do examinations assess after all? In most cases they are a measure of the rote learning skills of a child testing their memorization capacity. Can learning acquired within the four walls of a classroom be called complete education? Is knowledge gained merely from text books true knowledge? Examinations are obviously restricted to test this kind of learning. Can we then let ourselves believe that when our child performs well in a test he/she has been well educated? Aren’t we fooling ourselves by this approach?

 When the goal of teaching shifts from imparting knowledge to just attaining a high score the teaching – learning process is definitely hampered. The pressure associated with examination kills the joy of learning. It becomes a burden for the child. Isn’t learning an end in itself rather than a means to an end (to get a high score)?

In this exam - based schooling where is the scope to nurture the children into creative, imaginative and free persons? Do we provide them room to develop their own individual selves?

        Why exams in India are given the stature of a life crisis, is beyond logical explanation. It is like a mass neurosis from which the whole country suffers!!!! This abnormally anxious and obsessive attitude plays havoc with the lives of the nation’s youth.

        The need of the hour is to change our mind-set, our way of thinking towards the giving and taking of examinations and tests. Examinations should be treated as a useful tool but with their own limitations.

They are not a foolproof method and assess the child in a very limited manner. How we as parents, teachers and students perceive them will determine whether they are a boon or a curse.

        Research has time and again proven that the so called ‘good percentage’ can never ever ensure life success, success in a job or business or whatever career one pursues. It has to be accepted that complete education cannot be restricted to the classroom. There is much to learn in the real world, beyond the pages of text books.

        Real education is relevant, enjoyable; activity oriented and emphasizes hands-on-experience, wherein the natural curiosity and inquisitiveness of the child is not stifled. Hence, it inculcates a love for learning and knowing about things around them. School is also the place where children learn (essentially through examples set by teachers) human values which help them become better people.

        Education is all about becoming politically, socially, emotionally and morally aware adults. Eventually it benefits oneself, the society and humankind as a whole. Schooling that fails to do so………fails to educate!!!

(An article for the school magazine written in 2007.)

Straight from the heart!

I’m Not Marking This Mess by Mark Chivers (12)
I can see his face ready to blow
he shouts so the whole class will know
‘Sir, Sir I’m stuck, I need more time.’
‘I told you what to do, don’t step out of line’.
I find it hard and embarrassing with him yelling
about my reading writing and spelling.
‘Hurry up, get on with it, I’m not marking this mess’
I say, ‘I need more time, I’m doing my best’.
He tells me little kids can do better than me
‘I’ve seen better from my daughter, she’s only three
where’s your full stops and capital letters?
now go and sit down until you do better.’
It’s hard to do my work I find
I never rest, it’s always on my mind
then I get frustrated, rude and angry
because he doesn’t understand me.


This write up is an attempt to clarify the misconceptions related to the little understood and grossly misused term “dyslexia”. It is also an appeal to the readers to introspect and reflect on the implications the label has on children diagnosed with dyslexia.
The diagnosis of dyslexia is a long process that requires a battery of formal and informal psychoeducational tests and should be believed only if done by a qualified person preferably from an institute of repute. It is a type of specific learning disability marked by problems in reading, writing, math, spellings, attention, memory and fine motor coordination. It can manifest itself in various ways and so each child’s problem may seem unique and different from the other.


Almost all professionals and parents focus on ‘fixing’ the problems related to the all important 3 R’s namely reading, writing and arithmetic driven by the good intentions and the single minded zeal of bringing these children to the level of their peers and of course pass exams. Ironically the actual problems faced by them are buried under phrases such as- “he is just lazy”, or “she is not trying hard enough”, or “she is so smart in other activities”. What parents and educators alike do not address are the underlying causes behind their struggles. For example the child who just sits blankly when the teacher asks her to copy from the board might be overwhelmed by the letters and numbers which appear hazy and as if floating in air. This is called a visual processing difficulty and is only one out of the numerous difficulties that they may face. Most importantly almost everybody around them fail to notice the inherent, natural and special gifts they possess not in spite of the disability but because of it.


The dilemma is that numerous books and websites have pages and pages of research on the special talents the children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties have. They are excellent problem solvers when they are allowed to find solutions in their own unique ways. They excel in the fields of art, music, drama, sports, design and innovation and even entrepreneurship.  They work really well in the 3-dimensional world or the real world in which we live but their minds play havoc in the 2-dimensional world of traditional academics.
Here is an example to explain the extreme unfairness with which the adults treat children all their school lives. A person has a bone disease and experiences excruciating pain while running, at the same time he or she is a great artist. In the hope of curing the disease the person is made to practice running hundreds of miles but no time is spared for him or her to do what he/ she loves, that is painting. Making a dyslexic child read and write for hours in the name of remediating his/her problems at the cost of ignoring all the skills and talents he/she has is tremendously unjust and cruel. It deprives the child of experiencing success and every possible thing that contributes to their self esteem and shatters their confidence to pieces.


Today the educational fraternity and parents need to question themselves- whose failure is it? How can we as a society shirk from our responsibility when it is the system which is not able to cater to the different learning needs of every child? A child who learns through multiple modalities and not just visual (which is the dominant mode that our teaching-learning system requires) is simply differently abled. Making a baby fish fly or making a baby bird swim forcefully would be overlooking their skills and making their lives miserable. So it is not wrong to say that it is the system which is disabled not the child. This is an age of a modern technologically advanced world of emails, i-pads and text to speech software. It is high time that we redefine the importance of the 3R’s in the world of the future generations.


The sensible approach will be to let children discover the purpose of literacy (and rest of the education) in their lives. This is possible only when all that they learn has a connection to the real world and show them its functionality and use in their everyday lives. When the children are motivated enough, nothing can stop them from teaching themselves to read and write and do everything else that they want to do.


The adult world is always in a rat race for material gains of fame, wealth, power and ambition. The joy of childhood is the divine, elusive and precious quality that nobody has a right to snatch away from any child!
The world is too conventional in its thinking and almost always people like to stick to the majority’s way of doing things. Any divergence and people are considered abnormal or unnatural. The natural world is so diverse and yet so beautiful…..Similarly among humans too, such a variety is very natural and normal. This understanding will make the world a better place for children with special needs.
(An article for the school newsletter)