As much as I'm a strong believer in the importance of exams for students to get promoted to the next class, exams, especially as they are handled in my part of the world, are never a genuine means of assessing or measuring the intelligence of students.
Like I've said many times, I was halted in my academic journey for about two years due to my inability to pass the required exams to be qualified as a graduate and finally leave secondary school. I'm not being proud; I wasn't a dull student. I was among the best in my set, and the whole of our set got hooked by the very strong policy of having to pass the exams. Meanwhile, the low-level students in other schools, where their systems were very smooth and soft, had already been admitted into the university while we were still stuck trying to clear our exams. Gosh! At that time, I hated my school to the core, but after everything, I look back and smile at how I was refined in the process of trying to pass the exams. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean that the exams proved any form of brilliance on my part.
*Exams are mere tests of memory capacity and nothing more.£
In my final year during my school days, we had a professor and, at the same time, a politician as a lecturer for one of our major engineering courses. The man made things very easy for us, insisting that exams are merely tests of memory and never the core measurement of one's brilliance. He would teach his course in a very simple and stress-free manner, almost giving us his exam questions before the exam for us to master them before the exams. He wanted everyone to pass his course and, according to him, that's how it is done in the foreign country where he schooled. His course became one of the simplest we had, and everyone passed the course with ease.
"Why can't everyone be like him?" Until today, we still ask this question whenever we remember how some lecturers made school hell with the difficult exams where students resorted to giving money to pass the exams because they were too difficult to pass. Meanwhile, the professor lecturer never made his exams difficult, neither did he give room for students to sort him with money.
Real-life experience and the application of the knowledge we got from school are far different from the exams students are made to write in school. Life happens in a funny way whereby sometimes, depending on the path a man follows after school, the man questions the usefulness of the school examination stress he passed through while in school. Sometimes, a man will find himself far removed from what he studied in school.
I'm of the opinion that school exams shouldn't be made difficult as they are currently done in our schools today. It's just a test of memory, and that shouldn't be stressed.
Thanks for reading.
Photo: Chatgpt