Schooldays are allegedly tagged as the happiest days of our life but the very word examination mars their joys and conjures up to our minds sleepless nights, cramming, high-voltage tension, verbal or physical aggressiveness, mental depression, cut-throat competition and subtle jealousy. When examinations draw near, they are regarded as a blatant nightmare. The student’s world is plagued by examination fever and the days of reckoning have come to test the candidates’ knowledge and ability.

Examinations generate deep anxieties and tension; similarly, friendship gives way to the rat-race. It becomes a question of life and death for pupils and parents. They set in motion the mechanism of social engineering and categorise different strata of society. They draw a demarcation line between blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Reputed five-star schools become a nursery for the leaders of to-morrow and the elitist class is always born there. Their whole future will be determined in those fateful days as these schools provide them with a passport for life and open new vistas for further studies and job opportunities. They set the foundation for a pyramidal social structure: only the fittest will survive and reach the top.

Caring parents identify themselves with the success of their wards. Examinations become an obsession. Parents make incommensurable sacrifices for the advancement of their offspring in terms of energy and money. During examination periods, they deprive themselves of social gatherings to mark their presence at home as a great psychological boost-up.

Examinations become the concern of every member of the household even the grand parents. The children are put under intensive pressure and it is agonising to undergo such an experience. They are traumatised. Some may collapse on the eve of exams and have to be rushed to a private doctor for tranquilisers, others may find examinations as a deliverance and a step-forward on the road towards ultimate reward.

Sweet will be the rewards and the family will savour the hard-coveted prestige. Champagne will flow profusely and fire crackers will be let off to celebrate the Pyrrhic victory. But woe betide the family if the child fails as this is the greatest calamity that can befall them. Examinations are the mark of success.

Incalculable importance is paid to examination results on the labour market, surprisingly even in the choice of a life partner for marriage. Many have climbed the social ladder through academic success while others, unfortunate ones, have been earmarked as drop-outs and branded as failures for life. But paradoxically examination results are not fool-proof and sometimes academic success does not guarantee success in real life: many drop-outs have become renowned tycoons in later life!

Success does not fall as manna from heaven. It constitutes 99% perspiration and one percent inspiration. To achieve excellence, most students burn the midnight oil and have to toil day and night to the detriment of their hobbies. They have to tap all their energy to achieve the grades. The system is geared too much towards examinations. Teachers devote their time only to the syllabus, while the teaching of good manners and moral values is forgone. The pupils study a subject not because it will develop their aptitudes but because they are always keeping an eye on job opportunities.

Subjects like sports, music, dance, drama are long neglected. Human rights, such an important subject nowadays, must also form part of our curriculum. School exerts a social control; it provides society with manpower but the development of the individual is left in the background. It compels the pupils to cram facts rather than understand them.

It makes them bookish and what is the use of obtaining 3As in HSC for a pupil if he does not know the value of discipline in life! The syllabus must urgently be geared towards the needs of the nation to answer the challenges of the knowledge hub. Otherwise schools will be anachronistic and the future generation will not fit in society.

Examinations help teachers to determine their pedagogical skill and ability while simultaneously they show the power of assimilation of their pupils. Some candidates fare better than they are expected to because they are trained “examineses”. Others, who are expected to do well, fare poorly because they are pressurised under mortal terror.

Examinations sort out the different categories of pupils. They may not be the surest means of testing a candidate’s mental ability but so far they are the only means available. It is inconceivable to run the system without examinations; otherwise the flood gates of anarchy will be opened in our schools and pupils will become indolent, carefree and lazy. Examinations add tonic to school life and they are challenges of fate.

<B>Philip LI CHING HUM</B>