Examinations like the IB, IGCSE and A levels can be harmful for many students.They get so stressed that sometimes they think of taking their own lives. The stress also ruins relationships with others. Additionally, examinations don’t necessarily determine success in life, or how intelligent a person is. Furthermore, exams evaluate a student’s performance on one particular day and do not take into account external factors. While some might argue that tests can actually help students because they know how they have to improve and what skills to work on, the pressure and stress that these examinations create can be quite perilous for teenagers.
The strongest reason as to why examinations are perilous for teenagers is because they put a lot of stress on many of them. Sometimes this stress spoils their relationships with others. Other times the stress drives them to take their own lives.“Examinations can place a huge amount of stress on students and teachers alike. This can lead to negative health consequences as well as feelings of negativity directed at school and learning in general,”says Columbia University. This is the reason as to why teenagers sometimes start behaving differently before their examinations. It’s all because of the stress. Sometimes when students can’t cope with the pressure, they give up and take their own lives. “In the past month there have been a number of reports of how the pressure of school exams is having a terrible impact on the mental well-being of teenagers, with GPs prescribing anti-depressants such as Prozac and Seroxat to help young people deal with stress. The most tragic cases have led to suicide, such as the case of 15-year-old Tina Dzikl who died from a suspected overdose of antimalarial drugs in May. She was found collapsed in the grounds of Dunraven School, one of South London’s best state schools. She was due to take her GCSEs and a fast track GCSE in math, but left a note expressing worries about her forthcoming exams.”says Liz Smith. Not only are people in the United Kingdom committing suicide, even in the United States and India the teenage suicide rate due to exam pressure is very high. “On a single day last month, the Times of India reported two teenage boys in New Delhi hanged themselves at their homes. One was falling behind in his studies and the other was afraid of an English exam,” says causes.com. Would schools want their students to take so much pressure and stress that they take their own lives? “Statistics show that every year around 200,000 teenagers worldwide commit suicide while about 4 million adolescents attempts it. In India about 20 students kill themselves every day due to the stress related to exams,”says Anna Durisch. Are exams really that vital? When asked- ‘How stressed do you get before exams?’, 5 out of 9 students at UWCSEA grade 8 said that they get really stressed before exams. “7 per cent of Oxford’s student population are receiving counselling along with 728 postgraduate students, I wonder how too much focus on academia can stunt emotional and social development,” says Peter Trait. Is excelling in academics so important that students need to receive counselling? The evidence points to the idea that academic pressure can have both physical and psychological impacts on teenagers. Would parents want their children to be so troubled?
Furthermore, Examinations don’t necessarily determine success in life. What is success? Getting full marks on your IB Examination or being the lead actor in your school play. Both can be considered success. Success is “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose,” says Dictionary.com. It can be as small as doing well in art or drama. It does not only have to be related to examinations and tests. If being successful only meant getting a 45/45 on your IB exam or making it to an Ivy league college, there would be no Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Bill Gates, and Dhirubhai Ambani. All of these people share one thing in common. They are all billionaires who followed their dreams and passions, rather than doing well in examinations. In fact, Dhirubhai Ambani never saw the four walls of school. He is the famous founder of Reliance Group (Billion Dollar company) and father to two billionaires; Anil and Mukesh Ambani. He started Reliance Industries from scratch. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard University to follow their passions and dreams. Mark wanted to promote his social networking platform (Facebook), where as Bill Gates wanted to focus on building Microsoft.
“In recent years, exams have been given such a significance that they are in danger of undermining the very thing they are designed to encourage - a high quality broad based education that prepares people for life. Nor are they a binary predictor that someone will succeed or fail in life; ambition and aspiration backed by hard work are better predictors of success in life than any single result on one exam on one day,”says Rod Bristow. Even though examinations might be a simpler way to measure the intelligence of a student, they aren’t always accurate.“Many ‘intelligent’ students, so identified by the data emanating from various intelligence tests (which incidentally too often reinforce teacher expectations), are frustrated by papers that trot out the same questions in a different garb. These allow for little or no original thought and even actively discourage creative thinking and intelligent responses. Simply stated, measuring intelligence through examination is, inevitably, as limited as the examination itself. Whilst it might prove a reasonable sieve – perhaps even the best we can provide – it will not identify many of those we instinctively know to be intelligent,”says Peter Trait. Are examinations really reasonable?
Additionally, Examinations can be quite unfair to many students because they evaluate a student’s performance on one particular day and do not take into account external factors. What happens if a student works really hard at home but blanks out before exams? This happens to many students because of the anxiety and stress they have before exams. “Test anxiety is a psychological condition in which people experience extreme distress and anxiety in testing situations. While many people experience some degree of stress and anxiety before and during exams, test anxiety can actually impair learning and hurt test performance. A little bit of nervousness can actually be helpful, making you feel mentally alert and ready to tackle the challenges presented in an exam. Excessive fear, on the other hand, can make it difficult to concentrate and you might struggle to recall things that you have studied,”says Kendra Cherry. The evidence points to the idea that tests can be quite unjust to many students because of test anxiety. Irrespective of whether a person studies throughout the year, test anxiety can make him fail.
“The majority of students report being more stressed by tests and by schoolwork than by anything else in their lives. About 16-20% of students have high test anxiety, making this the most prevalent scholastic impairment in our schools today. Another 18% are troubled by moderately-high test anxiety. These students “blank” or “freeze” on tests. High test anxiety reduces working memory, confuses reasoning, increases mistakes, and lowers test scores. Students with high anxiety perform around 12 percentile points below their low anxiety peers (about half of a letter grade below),” says American test anxieties association. Should college be allowed to take in students who have high test scores? What about the other students that work hard but have test anxiety? Isn’t this really unjust and does not take into account the amount of hard work students put into doing well in examinations?
While examinations like the IGCSE, A levels and IB are widely used by universities to facilitate the admission of students based on merit, it is important to note that such board exams may not necessarily be perfect indicators of how deserving candidates are. Every student needs to be viewed holistically - with equal emphasis on academic and non academic achievements. For instance, a brilliant student should not be denied admission to a computer science course of his choice because he is unable to perform well on the particular day of the exam despite having successfully developed several softwares due to his natural aptitude and passion towards the field. Similarly, a student may not have a perfect score because she was also successfully running her own business simultaneously. Her entrepreneurial skills are as important, if not more, than her grades. Exams can’t fully determine how successful a person will be. Furthermore, while exams could help students learn to perform under pressure and engage in healthy competition, several times the amount of pressure the students take is tremendous and instead of trying their best, they focus on outdoing their neighbour. This is detrimental to their overall development. They often succumb to the pressure or lose hope too soon. This world loses many talented, creative and hard-working students by defining intelligence through examinations, without actually realising how inadequate and restricting the examinations are.
The purpose of every educational institution should not be encouraging students to ace a particular exam. Rather, students should be encouraged to follow their dreams and set a goal that makes them look forward to getting out of bed each morning. They should be encouraged to carve a niche for themselves and contribute to the world we call our home - as an athlete, a singer, a scientist or an entrepreneur... cause who knows what Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson, Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs scored when they were at school - the world will always remember them as determined, passionate men who followed their hearts and made this world a more vibrant place.
Bibliography:
Cherry, Kendra. "Test Anxiety." Very Well. N.p., 2016. Web. 13 June 2016.
"Text Anxiety." American Test Anxieties Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 June 2016.
Tait, Peter. "'Intelligence Cannot Be Defined by Exams'" The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, n.d. Web. 12 June 2016.
Bristow, Rod. "'Exam Results Don't Determine Success in Life'" The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, n.d. Web. 12 June 2016.
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