“You’ll be fine. It will all be over in a few weeks, and then you can enjoy life again. Just do your best – there is only so much you can do.”
These are the mantras students around the world, of all ages, are tired of hearing when exam season comes along. Schools and universities are transformed from places of learning and ideas to places of memorising facts and hacking exam techniques. Students become over-caffeinated machines. It is ridiculous that we are expected to answer complex problems of human nature, ethnic conflicts, or the eradication of poverty in a few hours when humans have tried to find solutions to these problems over centuries and decades and not yet succeeded.
So many philosophers and influential people have highlighted just how important education is to society. Educators hold the power to form the minds of the future generation. Then why are we stuck in the same old-fashioned exam practices, if we realise how much stress they bring, and how unrepresentative they can be?
Knowledge should be produced, not consumed. We are humans, not mass produced consumers, fabricated specimen moulded in the same way to think the same thoughts. Our worth cannot be examined by a standardised piece of paper and pieces of paper certainly should not have the ability to control our lives. Reforms need to be made to allow each and every individual’s true colours to shine through.
It just requires some thought.
Wandering Travelographer 