CHUA ZHENG QIAN (18), THADDAEUS TAN (21) 4C

Are exams in our education system a curse or a blessing?

We feel that exams in our education system is a curse, as it diminishes the cognitive-thinking ability in children and supresses their creativity, and provides an inaccurate gauage of an individual's learning potential. Firstly, exams in our education system are straying off their initial objective of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of our pupils, and are instead used as measures of effectiveness and intelligence of schools and pupils. From the article " The purpose of tests", it has been stated that exams are being used to measure a teacher or school's effectiveness, and that exams are being used to judge a student based on merit, to provide entry into internships or college. From the above information, we can infer that schools are now gearing students solely for the sake of examinations so that teachers can obtain raises in merit, while schools can access higher funding if they produce students capable of excellent results. The SAT and ACT are common tests used to form part of a student's entrance application to college. As such, students are now prepared by teachers to approach such tests in an efficient manner for both their personal achievement and future, and the future and status of the school and its educators. They lack a well rounded education which brings forth their creativity, instead, their innate ability to be creative is suppressed due to pressure of conforming to the norms, whereby memorisation is seen as the most efficient way of studying for an exam.  Even if students are willing to deviate from the norms and think out of the box, they are not encouraged to, as mentioned in article "Standardized testing and its victims", high stakes exams are being introduced or already taking place in most states, and the ones who tend to excel at such tests are those who rely on superficial and shallow learning. Even the schools are cutting down on enrichment programs and acitvites meant for the promotion of social and moral learning, and even lessons regarding other subjects,for the sake of solely focusing on the subject being tested. If schools are that desperate to raise the scores they produce, it is no wonder students raised in such an environment would undoubtably follow suit and choose superficial memorisation over unnecessary creativity and thought processing skills. From article "Against mindless testing- what do we really test?", Superintendent Josh Starr maintains that a relentless focus on high-stakes testing is, at best, misguided and, at worst, may limit the ability of future generations to solve society's problems. Along with him, many have come to fear the detrimental impacts of memorization at the expense of cognitive processing skills, and ability to evaluate decisions and analyse situations. Yet, most schools continue to spend an inordinate amount of time preparing students for the high stakes tests, via loads of practice papers and specific test preparation materials. This is already a mindset set into the place of educational institutes and leaders, that scores on tests are relative to the success of an individual and prosperity he or she might bring. Therefore, students are shifitng from creative thinkers to mindless memorisation robots, but given our environment, we are mostly helpless and left to conform to society's norms. Also, schools across the country are cutting back or even eliminating programs in the arts, recess for young children, electives for high schoolers, class meetings (and other activities intended to promote social and moral learning), discussions about current events (since that material will not appear on the test), the use of literature in the early grades (if the tests are focused narrowly on decoding skills), and entire subject areas such as science (if the tests cover only language arts and math). Anyone who doubts the scope and significance of what is being sacrificed in the desperate quest to raise scores has not been inside a school lately. This makes students 'studying machines', and students only go to school just to prepare for tests rather than building up character. Over time,this will have an impact on society as some people may have poor moral values, which may lead to increased crime, sexism, racism, etc. Therefore, we find that exams in our education system is a curse, as it rids us of opportunities and ability to perform cognitive thinking and express creativity, and instead focuses on superficial learning methods which ensure high examination scores to the benefit of schools, teachers and the assessment of students themselves and gives less time for social and moral learning of the students.