Our education itself is of poor quality. The exams we attach to it are even more meaningless and unscientific a grand drama staged collectively to deceive children. These exams serve no purpose other than to frighten and humiliate them. What thoughts do children carry about exams and marks? What fears weigh on their minds? What decisions do they make? As they grow older, what effect do these fears have on their future and life? Let us discuss these questions in detail, reason them out, and arrive at a fair conclusion. When writing exams, no one is watching, and no one knows how many marks will come. Yet when marks are announced, children shiver with fear. Tomorrow, the science teacher will announce marks. If the marks are low, he will scold them, insult them publicly, and their parents at home will scold them too. ‘Oh God Let the science teacher fall ill tomorrow so he won’t come’, prayed Neelima, slapping her cheeks as if to drive away the bad thoughts. The social studies teacher distributed answer sheets. Vijay scored 50 marks. He asked, ‘Sir, I answered all the questions. Why did you cut half my marks? But Kumar got full marks—why?’ The teacher replied, ‘You write too much in your own words. You mixed things that aren’t in the book. Kumar memorized the notes I dictated and wrote them word for word. That’s why he got full marks. Be happy I gave you half’. Who is truly intelligent then? The one who memorized blindly, or the one who wrote in his own words? This is injustice. The teacher lacks wisdom. He showed favoritism. In this way, every child feels some injustice with exams and marks. They remain in constant fear, suspicion, and resentment. These bitter experiences haunt them for life. The fear of exams and marks continues until their mid-twenties, until studies end. Fear becomes a habit. Later, that fear embeds itself deep inside like a ghost, resurfacing in life at every turn. They become timid, dependent on others for decisions, or merely followers of whoever is stronger even if that person is wicked. Such followers drag society into illness and corruption. Marks crown one child as the winner and brand 99 as losers. Only one comes first. The rest console themselves by looking at those who scored lower. If someone scored higher, they resigned, ‘I am not that capable’, Six months later, if the same exam is given again, the scores will never match the earlier ones, often not even half. Why? Because those marks are not true intelligence. Students simply cram, regurgitate, and then forget. That is why Einstein said ‘True knowledge is what remains after you forget everything you learned in school’. He also warned ‘Children should never be forced to take exams. They damage both mental and physical health’. We accept Einstein’s laws of physics as universal truths why then do we ignore his wisdom about education and exams? When marks become the measure of success, education itself bends to serve marks, not knowledge. Students study for marks, not for learning. They seek shortcuts, cram day and night, practice endlessly for exams. The brain adapts only for short-term memorization. A student may write beautifully about types of soils, but has never seen them in real life. He may write impressively about trees or about vaccination methods, yet knows nothing about doing them in practice. He knows about oxygen and its uses but cannot produce it in a lab. He has never even seen a test tube. What use are such studies, such competitions? The race for marks leads to competition for jobs, for profits in business, for wealth. The belief that ‘the more you earn, the greater you are’ spreads. People compete to such an extent that they justify cheating, corruption, and even crime to get ahead. Even sports, once a joyful activity, are now corrupted by competition and business. Players are bought and sold, playing not for themselves but for owners. Match-fixing forces them to deliberately lose. Betting drains families of their wealth. Players lose self-respect and become slaves. Society celebrates them when they win but insults them when they lose. They collapse under such humiliation. Thus, endless competitions drag society into moral decay. Education vanishes. Knowledge, wisdom, growth, justice and virtue become empty words. Institutions rot in corruption. Everything turns into buying and selling. Until these false systems of exams, marks, and competitions are transformed, society will never be free. The real tests are different. They happen every day, silently, shaping children without them even realizing.
