Is Education only about exams? 

Editor,

The Nobel Corona Virus has affected the whole world in the most unexpected way with millions being infected and thousands losing their lives daily. My prayers with every infected individual across the globe and also with every deceased and may their souls rest in peace.  This pandemic may have started killing individuals just from the past few months but there is something more dangerous and threatening than this pandemic that is affecting the life, mental state and career of most school and college students and that is none other than our great education system. To understand this better, let me talk about my own board, the MBOSE and then the NEHU.

Right from the time I was a school student and was studying under MBOSE, I was always taught that quantity matters more than quality; meaning that if the question is for 10 marks then I must write an answer that is at least 4 pages long or else I won’t score good marks for that answer. This was the mentality that was being built in the mind of a 15 year old student. Our teachers always rushed to complete the syllabus on time ignoring the fact that most students aren’t able to cope up with what they are teaching. I don’t blame them either. They have a responsibility and they are only following instructions. My problem is – why are we being taught this way? Why is the Board creating so much pressure on teachers and eventually on the students? What’s the point of scoring 80 and 90 % when our concepts are not clear? Yes, mugging up the answers and puking them out on the papers during exams may help us score good marks but what will we do with those marks later in life? Is anyone even thinking this way or is everyone just busy making money and ignoring the mental status of the students?

After I passed out from MBOSE I came to a college under NEHU with the hope that life in college may be a little different and that at least here the teachers and administration would concentrate more on concepts as compared to my former Board, but I soon realised that both MBOSE and NEHU are radish of the same farm. Here too quantity matters more than quality and I’m sure most of the students reading this will agree with me. Right from the semester system to the way marks are allotted for various topics of a particular subject everything looks so messed up. At first the classes for the first semester would begin in June and by October the exams were conducted which means that the teachers and the students get barely four months to complete a whole semester’s syllabus and the teachers were bound to rush through and in between there are various holidays, Sundays etc. Now this had been going on for two years but at least, last year, the exams were conducted in November and therefore the pressure on the students was slightly less as compared to previous years.

But this year again the pressure on the students has started building up and the reason is not covid-19 alone but the bulk of assignments that we are getting under the tag of “online classes.”  Some teachers are giving us assignments without even teaching us anything about the topic and worse they give us a deadline to submit the assignment. How do they expect us to do an assignment about something that they haven’t taught us at all! Besides, how will a student who has no access to internet services complete his assignment? How will a student living in rural areas where electricity and phone connectivity is erratic, even cope-up with the online classes?  The teachers as well as the Board must understand that India in general and Meghalaya in particular is still not in a position to totally shift to online studies. I know that ‘online studies’ may sound modern and cool but there are parents struggling for food and water in different parts of the state and country and here the teachers expect the children of such parents to  complete their assignments on time and that too with zero knowledge about the topic!

Lastly, I will conclude with a quote from an anonymous person that I came across on my twitter handle just as I was typing this letter. The tweet says, “Universities are ‘worried’ about exams despite the fact that not even half of the syllabus is completed. This shows how problematic our education system has been. It was never about ‘imparting knowledge,’ it is always about ‘exams and results’.”