Exams in India are a family affair. When a child has exams, the entire household comes to a standstill in preparations of some unforeseen battle. Hectic schedules are maintained, not only for those preparing to go into battle, but for all residing members of the family. Waking up in the early hours of the morning and/or working late into the night waking are part of the routine. There is a big list of distractions that are not excused or even tolerated. Taking priority is TV viewing and social media, play time and even birthday parties are either preponed or postponed. This hectic schedule reaches a crescendo when the big ones such as the board exams are on. Is all the trouble we take to avoid our children failing worth the efforts? What lessons on life are exams teaching them?
No doubt we have exam stress. While some amount of stress is good for performance, is present day exam stress justifiable? Exams that are meant to test learning so that the student can move forward in accumulation of information, have instead become a competition, where the winner takes it all and the loser stands small. A personal battle of acceptance and self-worth.
Since exams are such a family affair, the child shoulders the responsibility of winning this battle, not for their own sake but that of the family. Somehow we have managed to turn this simple testing procedure into a measurement of pride, for the family. If this battle is lost, then the child has to bear the brunt of family disgrace. With such mounting pressure to perform, children feel they are letting their parents down when they fail a test.
The worth of a student is measured by their performance at an exam. Failure becomes an ugly word. At a very young age, the child learns rejection and the need to conform. We translate failure in exams to worthlessness. Sometimes failure is not even about passing the test but the grade that is obtained. Parents set these standards of comparison for their children, always equating their abilities with that of a neighbor, relative or friend. The child’s self-esteem receives a terrible beating if they have not performed according to these expectations.
Children tend to introject their exam experience, learning lessons about self-worth, pushing their young minds to extraordinary limits to feel accepted. No doubt suicide rates have increased amongst young children who do not meet their parent’s expectations. While good results are well accepted, failures are equally rejected.
When a child faces such dilemma it is but natural for them to consider exams as a stressor. So the concept of exams has moved from merely testing for information to a more social cognitive strategy for segregating the winners from the loser. A marker of deficiency rather than a maker of learning. This emotional component of exams is in fact a deterrence for performance.
Our exam system has not changed much since the last fifty years or more. We still carry on testing for primitive memory function of rote learning and recall. Although there has been enough and more research on the working models of memory, nothing seems to influence our education boards.
The memory processes are rather simple. Whenever we learn new information, two important aspects of our memory are in action. One that actually analyses the new information and tries to integrate it with previous learned material, our short term memory (STM); and the other that tries to retain it for longer time, so that it is accessible on demand, our long term memory(LTM). The duration of items in the LTM is relative to the depth of processing.
Thus if teaching had to incorporate these functions of memory processes, a student would have the opportunity to systematically understand meaning through experience, further question for relational induction and deduction and create stronger traces in their LTM. Learning and exams would be superior and less stressful.
But sadly, our entire focus of education is about rote learning. Children spend hours mugging up essays that they have to later recall. We do not expose our children to questions and implications that measure their understanding instead we have exams that merely test the strengths of their Short Term Memory processing.
Memory prowess however is not a marker of intelligence. Intelligence enables us to profit through experience, acquire knowledge, think abstractly, act purposefully and adapt to changes in our environment. Does our present day education allow this? We seriously need to question the quality of our education. Are the present day exams such an important aspect of learning? Is the pressure that we put our children through justifiable? Should we be satisfied with the types of graduates our systems keep churning out?
There is an urgent need for change in our present education system. Teaching has to become more student centric than teacher centric. Mammoth changes are needed for education to get a makeover. Shortcuts should no longer be tolerated. We cannot ignore the consequences of how our education, exams and failure affect our children.
Dr Aldina Braganza e Gomes is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and associate professor, HOD, Dept of Psychology Carmel College
