THE GREAT DEBATE – Examinations Should be Abolished

Two days ago, a heated debate ensued between my class students in JSS1 and the students of JSS2. The topic was

Examinations Should be Abolished

We kind of drew the short straw since we were told to move the motion. It was hard thinking of points that will actually convince students who have believed in exams their whole lives that it should be cancelled. Against all odds, my students performed excellently well. I’ll join all the points from both of our speakers into 5 main points. So everyone, this was what went down.
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Albert Einstein once said

Everybody is a genius. If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid

Good afternoon Mr. Chairman, panel of judges, my accurate timekeeper, co-debaters and my fellow students. My name is Precious Eniafe and I am here to move the motion which says “Examinations Should be Abolished”
According to the English dictionary,
Examination is defined as a test involving answering written or oral questions while
Abolish means to end or cancel.
My points goes thus.

It is Not a True Test of Ability.

Let’s take our school cook as a case study. She’s renowned for her delicious meals and everyone here can attest to that. If her cooking skills were to be judged by her score in a standard Food and Nutrition exam, do you think she would be here? We have a lot of students here that will easily get an “A” in that exam but in all honesty, how many of you here can actually boil water? (she smiles).
As we will notice, such an exam puts much emphasis on a students reading (in most cases cramming) ability and not on their actual capabilities.

It Lowers Students Self-esteem

Just like the quote I made earlier, a student that fails will go on thinking himself a failure. When students with minds of Beethoven, Picasso, Shakespeare etc. who were geniuses in their various fields are put through a general test with all other students and they fail, it becomes demoralizing that they actually lose hope all together and drop the actual things they are amazing at. A lot of students who fail a lot end up being bullies, truants, thugs, depressed and in some extreme cases suicidal.

It Does not Differentiate Students

We all come from different backgrounds, we have students who barely eat breakfast before coming to school, we have students who after school ours must help their parents in their workplace and end up having no time to study, we have students that spend half the semester at home because they cannot afford school fees. All these students will take the exact same exam with everyone else. How can we ever decide who is best when the students obviously weren’t subjected to the same physical, emotional, moral and social conditions. Some students may even fall sick on the day of the exam or might have faced a tragedy close to the exam time. The exam will never be able to pick the best student.

Examination Malpractices

Nobody wants to fail. This has made students over the years develop various methods of beating the system. This does not only disrupt the grading system, it gets worse when they get into the society. Students who get away with examination malpractice tend to believe they can get away with anything. Some may evolve to petty stealing, violence, rebellion against authorities, looting etc.
A system that can gives cheaters the upper hand and also gives rise to these socially unacceptable behaviors definitely needs to be rechecked.

Stress

This last point cannot be overemphasized. How many of you here have ever gotten sick during exam period? I definitely have. Examination puts too much pressure on the students and it pushes them sometimes past their limits. The school clinic is busiest during exam times. Students are always flooding in and out like it’s the market day. Reading too much also puts too much stress on the eyes and nowadays we have students in elementary schools already needing glasses.
Asides the fact that students will not perform their best when they are sick, money is also spent on treatments and we know money is not really that easy to come by

How Do We Do It Then

The mandate lies on our education system to find what individual student excel at and not pile everyone together in a room to write the same exams. Students should be put through practical, asked to choose project of their own.
Students who like agriculture can take on project on the school farm for the semester, students who fancy literature can write a book, students who love music can compose and so on and so forth. Examination needs not be fully canceled but it shouldn’t constitute the bulk of the whole grading system. Individual students project should count the most and at the end of the semester, students can be examined on their individual projects. I’m certain this will actually develop students for the labour market and make the world a better place.

With these few points of mine, I hope I’ve been able to convince or at least arouse your thoughts and not confuse you that Education should be Abolished.
Once again my name is Precious Eniafe.
Thank You

Reference: All pictures were downloaded from Google.com