One awesome thing that I am required to do as a full time teacher is to sit through hours of nerve wreaking boredom that exam invigilation brings with it! Anyway here I am after 2.5 (which feel more like 25) hrs of not doing anything but staring at a group of students taking their final exams with a fellow teacher. My only job there is to ensure that they mind their own
exam paper and not others. Watching them write frantically looking up every now and then to glance at the wall clock and act as if the final hour of doom is approaching I keep telling myself, "whoever said time is relative was absolutely right."
Anyway so after what felt like eternity, I am done with my duty, I hand over the collected papers at the examination office and take the stairs down to my office. On my way I cant resist overhearing students that sat in my class discuss a particular accounting question and how one girl had gotten the answer wrong. As she does the usual, "
array yaar" business around it one of the boys comments, "If you had sat at the back with us all you would have too gotten it right". I look up to him as hes caught mid sentence realizing a second too late who was passing by.
I am torn between what to do and I end up pretending I heard nothing as I see him making that awkward face we all Pakistanis make when caught red handed for a crime we consider to be too small to be a crime really.
For the rest of the day however I couldn't help but think about how I should thank exams or perhaps more appropriately thank how exams are often conducted for undoing so many things we teachers try to do throughout the term. With the power of marks/numbers/grades behind them this great tool called exam teaches our students so much more about learning and the approach to it than what I can.
So, as i marvel at the student's ability to elude me rather than marveling at what they have learned during the term I thought i might as well write this post for my fellow teachers as "x number of things they should thank the idea of examination and the way its usually conducted in our academic scene"
1. We should thank exams for teaching our students that dishonesty is great specially when marks are involved.
(be it a sign language created for MCQ confirmation, to one's ability to look at teacher in the eye and act so genuinely surprised when pointed out for cheating that the teacher starts having self doubt...)
2. We should thank exams for making students believe that the outcome is more important than the process
(an therefore, if they got the answer right the means with which they got it wont matter)
3. We should thank the exam for helping students develop an understanding that a momentary reproduction of knowledge is a greater goal than internalizing and evaluating what they have been exposed to
4. We should thank the exams for making our kids look at us as not people who genuinely care about their growth, development and learning but as tricksters who try their hardest to create confusion and chaos in their otherwise uncomplicated lives
5. We should thank exams to help emphasize the importance of one right answer, written in one particular way, hand written in pretty writing over a standard word count.
6. We should thank exams for ensuring that out students understand that time will always be against them and the champion is not the one who takes his time but instead one who masters that time by doing it the fastest
and kind of all of this together
7. We should thank exams as being the unyielding part of the system of education that manages to somehow disseminate knowledge without really teaching at all... a system that sees mistake in inability to demonstrate knowing rather than seeing mistake in how knowledge was arrived at
Haram kamai halaal ghost all over again...
... yes I know you can almost smell the yumness of Mcmuffin and and hear the crunch as you almost chew into that goodness called hash browns but let me get back to my story which offers more than a juicy borrowed bite from the company me and my daughter jointly love to devour under the disappointing stares of our health and nutrition continuous beloved friends and family members.