Exams must be a litmus test of students’ critical thinking and conceptual diligence. Our examination system requires students to regurgitate answers to questions they already know. Even the wording of questions given in exercises remains intact in examination papers. Moreover, repetition of the same questions over the years doesn’t leave space for critical thinking as students hanker after ready-made answers. That’s why obtained marks just lag two or three marks behind the total marks. The ideas espoused in textbooks must infuse the answers, otherwise, the answers would be outright wrong. Definitely, it promotes cramming.

Needless to say that pedagogy acquiesces to the demands of the stifling exam system. Teaching cold facts in a cold manner makes the learning process tedious and boring. It reminds us of Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times,(a critique on the fossilized education system), wherein Sissy Jupe is snubbed for using Fancy to answer questions:

“Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy. That’s it! You are never to fancy.”

It rends heart when we see students even of grade one parroting answers to questions related to topics beyond their sensory experience! Because our education system doesn’t need them to experience the world around them.

Einstein perhaps in our context said: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

To stem this rot, our examination system must be overhauled to tap the latent talent of our students. If anything constructive from this whole educational system is meant, experience-based questions should be asked. Students should be taught to infer and deduce. Exams should bring the five senses into action. Top of all, they must stir students’ imaginations.

M. NADEEM NADIR,

Kasur.