People who are speeching that “a country where children celebrate exam cancellation and cry on the tik tok and PUBG ban, should not complain about unemployment” are completely wrong. They actually generalizing the whole problem and are not seeing behind the scene.
Everyone becomes happy when they get relaxation and when any medium of relaxation and happiness is shut down then obviously people will complain about that. However, this does not mean that exam or study is about stress and tension but actually our wounded and weakened education system make that so.
In India, our school teaches English almost till 12 years (if we count from 1st to 12) but students still are not able to learn English. Don’t think only Hindi-medium students, Even students of English medium don’t learn English properly.
In school, students don’t learn the subjects or topics to understand their use in practical life (which should be the main focus of education) they just do rattfication for exam purpose, like these things which we read in books does not happen in the actual world. From the 8th class onwards, most of the teachers just focus to teach those topics which are important for exam purposes. However, there are a number of teachers who understand their responsibility and teach their students the actual meaning of study.
It looks like, our school just teaches the students to do well in exams, everyone just focuses on matters which matter in the exam. I used to too much irritate when our teacher used to skip those topics which were not relevant for exam purpose. This exam phobia is not for only grown students, this starts from the first year of school when a child enters the school.
So, when this is all about exams, students read the books just to pass the exam and once exam finished, they forget the topics. So, either it is 12 years of study or 22 years, students will not grab the idea of topic in such type of education system.
This whole exam thing, was the story of every year whether there was lockdown or not, so when lockdown declared and schools were shut down, it weakened the education more and that exam-based education system just collapsed. Maybe, some good and well-established schools (which actually charges high fees) focused to teach their students, but we should not forget that crores of Indian students study in those schools where teacher themselves don’t’ know the subject properly and where infrastructure is too poor and old.
It should be noted that in lockdown education system depended on online teaching which was totally irrelevant in Indian perspective, because no matter what, a number of people do not have proper access of internet and wi-fi and if people have smartphone in family then it is not available for students.
Indian schools and education boards also showed carelessness in the lockdown period, they could not declare the stable academic calendar (maybe it was due to corona waves).
There are many children who are not topper but they worked hard and read and studied even in lockdown but continuous exam postponement, made them ignorant from the study.
So before we generalize the idea of study and blame the children for the celebration of exam cancellation, we should know that what are the reasons behind this.
10th and 12th students are not too much mature and tech-savy, most of them have no knowledge about technology, we don’t live in America or in Europe where everyone has enough sources for online teaching. We are poor in technology.
Even if education boards in India decides to take online exams, then it could not be possible due to present condition of online facilities, student have not strong internet connection so they could not give online exam through video calls, and if skip the video call then also student doesn’t know how to submit scanned copies of the answer sheet, and also there are more technical problems. So it was better to cancel the exam rather than beating the students mentally in this stressful environment of lockdown period.
So, the exam-based education system was already stressful and unproductive, the teacher could not teach properly, online system sprinkled salt on the wound, due to lockdown, children were physically and mentally disturbed, education board and schools could not declare the exam schedule on time, children got tired, in these all situation if exam got canceled on the valid reasons, what is the mistake of children? Why should not they be happy after cancellation? After all, they got relaxation. Which we all need very badly at this present time.
This article is written by Advocate A.H. Gangohi.
