Examinations - Help or Hinderance?

After a long, and i mean VERY long hiatus, TML is back!.... for now.

Obviously busy with examinations, I question the purpose of them. Schools have their own way of deciding on your 'practice exams' results, as well as the amount of those you need to take. The point of all these exams? To 'prepare' you for the big exams. Yet, are these exams really that useful? Or are they just making you doubt your own ability?

Let us look at the difficulty of the examination itself. Some schools set their paper easy, and mark strictly. Others, set papers hard, mark leniently so you'll see stars on your papers. Of course, there are those schools who both set their papers both hard and mark strictly. It's impossible for a school to set sub-standard papers, especially in Singapore.

The rationale behind some schools *coughminecough* is that they do not want us to be 'complacent'. Sure... by marking strictly, from scrutinising our papers for the tiniest error to not marking to the highest available level, we will never get complacent! Even when we're right, we're wrong.

Complacency is an excuse. No student in the right mind would be complacent about a major examination. Of course, there are plenty of students who arn't in the right mind. Yet, what about those that are? We only doubt ourselves thanks to these 'complacency' beliefs. No amount of hard work will result in a satisfiying and deserving mark. If we're wrong when we're right, then how do we know what's right? The rationale of complacency may work on certain students - those who are complacent themselves.

Also, marking strictly is a double-edged sword. They may turn students who arn't complacent at all into perfect subjects of complacency. It's because schools unravel their 'secrets' of the examinations that we cannot be bothered with them because we know we cannot achieve the highest level. I'm sure you agree there's no point in paying for an item if a salesman told you it'll break soon. It's almost the same here, if they're gonna mark strictly, why tell the students that in the first place?

Students need motivation to study. These 'practice exams' are just DE-motivating us instead. We will never hit the stars if they place a ceiling on it. We'll come to believe that ceiling is the limit. Let's do out with these 'practice exams' and 'wemarkstrictlybecausewedontwantyoutogetcomplacentthatswhyyoucannevergetana1exceptforoneortwopeople'


PS: That's 'an a1' and not 'anal'


Merely.