DC debate: Are tests important for children in the preliminary level?
Malathy Rayan Vs Sreelatha. K
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Malathy Rayan - ‘If a child sits for a proper exam then his/her competency level also increases’
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First, I believe that without proper testing, a child's potential cannot be properly assessed and that’s why I completely agree with the MHRD’s decision that Class 10 students must have CBSE board based exams. Only if the child is tested accurately can the child also produce the best output. Secondly, if a child undergoes a proper exam then his or her competency also increases. If the students know that they can take a subject lightly then they also tend to lose interest in studying and they don't try hard enough to excel.
Also, another factor is that students lack the understanding of science and mathematics concepts if they are not regularly tested on it. There is fear that sometimes students forget about certain theories or concepts even after they do an exam but if they are not even tested on it then why would they ever take it seriously enough to learn it even once?
Thirdly, if the students don't know how their peers have performed they're not going to be competitive. They need to have some kind of a yardstick to measure their level of understanding and knowledge, if they are not graded or marked, then how will they know how much extra effort they need to put or if they are doing well enough in a subject.
In Kerala, even in elementary school, board exams are mandatory, so if assessments are conducted periodically then the student will be prepared for tougher exams in the future as well. From personal experience as an educationist, since CBSE exams became optional, I have noticed that students who pick school conducted exams over the CBSE based exams, always tend to perform badly during their first term.
These students are then made to undergo remedial classes and the evaluation is usually board based, since all the questions are CBSE questions. It is only after they go through these remedial classes that they perform better in the quarterly and the half yearly exams. Since the students anyway need to do the 12th exam, the tenth could prepare them better.-
(The writer is the principal of Velammal School in Chennai)
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Sreelatha. K - ‘Tests do nothing but cause immense stress to students, teachers, parents’
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As a research scholar, who has devoted most of her adult life to reading hundreds of other research papers and books on school education, I can assure you that not a single scholar or psychologist thinks that exams are necessary for students. Exams do nothing except cause immense stress to not only the student but the parents and teachers as well and I believe that it is something that can totally be avoided. The exams only check memory power and while some students may have higher memory power, the ones who don't have a strong memory power are dismissed as "dumb" when they could actually be more knowledgeable than the former group.
If one observes a student's performance, one will notice that, if a student has an interest or an aptitude for one subject, he or she always excels in it, regardless of whether or not they are tested on it. These students might also perform badly in other subjects but they'll always take extra efforts to find more information or put in more effort when it comes to a subject they like. There I think that testing them on all the other subjects that will probably never use in their future, is an absolute waste of time. Like a great psychologist I once read said that it impossible to forcibly teach a child, you cannot create aptitude, it has to be developed naturally.
According to data statistics that I have read, no student prefers exams, it is only parents and school authorities that feel it is essential for the students to excel in those exams. Honestly speaking, how many of us even use any of the knowledge that was thrust upon us in school? Researchers of the educational field like I, welcomed the decision when the MHRD decided to make the exams mandatory. Just when we were looking for other ways to completely eliminate exams and the grading system, the MHRD is planning to implement it again and I speak on behalf of all research scholars would say that it is completely unnecessary and just a waste of time.
(Sreelatha. K is a Ph.D scholar in Pondicherry University. Her research is on ‘Quality of teacher education and education in India’)
(As told to Johanna Deeksha)
