Exam 'Tips'

I recently happened to be the guest speaker at a seminar conducted by an organization for the students appearing for their school board examinations. The topic for the meet was 'Exam fear and stress: how to handle them'.

A teacher from one of the reputed schools of the city was also invited to be a co-speaker at the session. This gentleman is an examiner for the board papers and apparently knows the way papers are assessed. Some of the 'tips' given by him were not only shocking but also rudely eye-opening in nature.

1. There is a set 'length' for the answers depending on their marks. For example, 5-markers are supposed to be answered in between 2.5 - 3 pages.

Is this really the set standard by the board! What about taking things like quality of the answer, size of the student's handwriting etc into account? If a person has a neat and precise, but small (albeit legible) handwriting, does he still tend to lose marks if he does not drag into the set range of size?

Whatever happened to the saying that 'brevity is the soul of wit'? I have often found it easy to answer questions in a logical fashion with minimal amount of words. It does not matter how many marks a question has been allotted. If the student covers every relevant point in minimal words, my tendency would be towards awarding him the maximum marks possible a. for his knowledge and b. for his ability to condense and present the same.

2. If the student does not know the exact answer of a question and writes in anything from the same chapter, he still gets some marks!

Is this not an open invitation for students to spew garbage in the exam papers?

3. It was shocking to hear the gentleman 'advise' the students to make use of any opportunity that presents itself to use unfair means. Although he did not openly advocate using unfair means, he definitely hinted that should the opportunity present itself, why let it go?

Is this the 'education' that we are imparting to our school children? Is education just limited to the content between the covers of 'prescribed' books. Whatever happened to character building and moral values?

It was disheartening to hear the woes of students who have been forced into a certain stream just because their parents want them to do so.

When will we ever emerge from this mad race of 'educating' kids for marks and social status?