I have been a student and so have I been a teacher and from both views, things appear differently to me. When I was a student, I used to ask myself why teachers don’t just believe us when they teach and ask us if we understand. I mean, why will I lie that I understood something when I didn’t? Well, I did that all the time. It’s just like how everyone’s response to how are you has become ‘ I’m fine’.
As a student, times were hard. I had a lot to study with little to no time. Sadly, I had to do whatever it took to pass and as time went by, school became more exam based than knowledge based for myself and most of my mates. As a teacher, I understood and I could also see how much students were going through. I could see the struggle and all but to some extent, I felt some students were lazy. Random things they were supposed to know weren’t so random anymore and I was shocked. I guess if you know something, you expect everyone else to know it because you think it’s easy. But the knowledge gap between individuals is a very wide one.
To me, I believe exams is a test of a teachers work at the end of the day and not mainly a students level of knowledge or recall entirely. As a teacher, if 50% of students haven’t understood your lecture at the end of it, then it is assumed you aren’t doing your work well. Truth be told, some teachers are lazy, yet students are expected to pick up their slack. And it’s always the lazy ones who set the difficult questions.
To some extent, students have come to fear exams more than anything and sadly, that isn’t supposed to be the case. Some students even take their lives because they didn’t pass. But we forget we are only humans and there is a limit to what we can do. Everyone has what they look out for when seeking education. Someone wants to get all As without the knowledge and there’s another who wants to gain the knowledge and knows the As will follow. Someone somewhere just wants to pass through the school and will whatever it takes to. The choice is yours at the end of the day because exams isn’t the end of the world. It never has been and never will be. Exams is just there to know the level of understanding of students and tajy reflects a tecahers overall performance.
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