Ong Shi Qing (9), Renise Ngo (11) - 4B

Are Exams In Our Education System A Curse or A Blessing?

We feel that exams in our education system is a curse rather than a blessing.

Tests do not allow students to develop other interests of their own as well as they should. From the article The Purpose of Tests, it is said that the root intention of examinations are to identify student strengths and weaknesses. Although this may be true, the modern education system is largely devoted to subjects like science, mathematics etc. that may not be students’ strengths. There are many youths who are diversely talented in many areas yet education systems often do not provide enough platforms for them to showcase their talent. Instead, tests are used to gauge how well students perform in these standardised subjects and not on their actual strengths. For example, students who are exceptionally well versed in art, yet get terrible grades are written off as “useless” just because they are unable to do well academically and probably cannot attain a well-paying job in the future. Quoting Sir Ken Robinson, “human talent is tremendously diverse” and “people have very different aptitudes”. According to fact 7 of Standardised Testing and Its Victims, "The time, energy, and money that are being devoted to preparing students for standardised tests have to come from somewhere." Many leisure and co-curricular activities are being sacrificed just so students can focus on getting good grades for their test. This causes students to neglect their own passion and talents because they focus too much on their academics. The idea of pursuing one’s dreams and following your heart has all become distant in a student’s mindset, restricting students’ ability to be able to think for themselves, and do what they want to achieve in the future. Rather than identifying strengths and weaknesses, examinations are constricting the talents of students, making them unable to follow their passions and achieve what they would like themselves to be doing. However, some may argue that tests allow students to gauge their abilities, be it in the arts or the academics. Exams do not necessarily prevent them from pursuing their dreams as they could be doing so and yet still have examinations because they need to know where they stand among the other students. Nonetheless, we still feel that students do not learn to think critically through standardised tests and examinations. These only teach them to memorise and learn through rote learning, in which case they do not really learn anything useful for life at all. As quoted from Let's Teach Students to Think Critically, Not Test Mindlessly, "memorization is the easy part; applying academic thought to real-world problems is the greater challenge." Tests do not allow students to practise what actually matters in the real world: being able to solve problems and make use their creativity to make the world a better place. These standardised tests only make the students focus on grades, grades, and more grades, as if it could feed them for life. People think that students who can ace any test will bring them prosperity in the future, but in fact it will only bring about their downfall, if there is a lack in people for other areas.