Sunday Reflection
AARAI Horizons >> Student Corner>> Sunday Reflection
Sunday Reflection
Are We Educating People to Pass Exams or to Live?
There is a question I have been carrying with me since our last Sunday Reflection.
If education is supposed to prepare us for life, why does so much of education seem to revolve around passing examinations?
From the moment many children enter school, they quickly learn what matters.
Get good grades.
Pass the examination.
Move to the next class.
Get a degree.
Find a good job.
Then perhaps get another degree.
Somewhere along the way, we can become so focused on the next examination that we forget to ask what we are actually learning for.
I remember how seriously examinations were treated when I was growing up. A good result could bring joy to an entire family. A poor result could feel like a personal failure. Sometimes, a single examination seemed capable of determining whether someone was considered intelligent, successful, or even capable of having a good future.
But can one examination really tell us that much about a person?
Can it tell us whether someone knows how to communicate?
Can it tell us whether they can work with people?
Can it tell us whether they can solve an unfamiliar problem?
Can it tell us whether they can handle disappointment?
Can it tell us whether they have compassion?
Can it tell us whether they can recognise an opportunity and create something from it?
Can it tell us whether they will use their knowledge responsibly?
Perhaps not.
And yet, many of our educational systems continue to place enormous emphasis on what can be measured in an examination hall.
The student who knows how to pass
There is nothing wrong with wanting students to perform well academically. Knowledge matters. Discipline matters. Examinations can serve a useful purpose.
The problem begins when passing becomes the purpose of learning.
A student can become exceptionally good at remembering what the teacher wants to see in an examination without necessarily developing the ability to think independently.
They may know the definition of leadership but have never led anyone.
They may memorise the principles of entrepreneurship but never try to solve a problem in their community.
They may write an excellent answer about communication but struggle to communicate with another person.
They may pass an examination about research methodology but feel completely lost when asked to design an actual study.
This is where I think education needs to become more honest with itself.
Knowing about something is not always the same as knowing how to do it.
And knowing how to do something is still not the same as knowing when, why, and responsibly to do it.
What happens when life asks questions that were not in the examination?
Life is rarely structured like an examination.
There is no question paper telling us which question is worth twenty marks.
There is no marking scheme explaining exactly what the examiner expects.
There is no lecturer standing beside us when we have to decide whether to take a difficult opportunity.
There is no model answer when we are trying to rebuild after failure.
Life gives us problems we have never seen before.
It asks us to work with people who think differently from us.
It forces us to make decisions with incomplete information.
Sometimes we succeed.
Sometimes we fail.
Sometimes we have to start again.
This is why I believe education should prepare us for uncertainty, not just examinations.
A young person may leave university with excellent grades and still discover that the real world requires a different set of skills.
They need to communicate.
They need to negotiate.
They need to manage conflict.
They need to make decisions.
They need to work with people.
They need to adapt when plans fail.
They need to continue learning when nobody is giving them an assignment.
Perhaps these are not extras.
Perhaps these are part of what education is supposed to provide.
We should also be careful about what we call success
I sometimes wonder whether we have unintentionally taught young people to measure themselves almost entirely through comparison.
Who scored higher?
Who entered the better university?
Who graduated first?
Who got the better job?
Who has more degrees?
Who earns more?
Competition can motivate us, but if it becomes the foundation of education, something important can be lost.
A student who does not perform well in examinations may begin to believe that they are not intelligent.
Another who performs exceptionally well may begin to believe that academic success makes them superior to others.
Neither conclusion is necessarily true.
Human ability is much more complicated than a grade.
Some people think deeply but do not perform well under examination pressure.
Some are excellent communicators.
Some are natural problem solvers.
Some are gifted at working with their hands.
Some are creative.
Some understand people exceptionally well.
Some have the courage to start things that others are afraid to attempt.
Some discover their strengths much later in life.
Education should help us discover and develop these abilities rather than reducing human potential to a number on a results sheet.
Perhaps we need to teach more than answers
This becomes even more important in the age of artificial intelligence.
If a student can obtain an answer to almost any factual question within seconds, perhaps memorising more information is no longer enough.
We need students who can ask better questions.
Students who can recognise unreliable information.
Students who can think critically.
Students who can create rather than simply reproduce.
Students who can use knowledge ethically.
Students who can sit with a difficult problem without immediately looking for the easiest answer.
In other words, perhaps the future of education is not about producing people who know everything.
It is about producing people who know how to learn.
Education should prepare us for life
I do not think examinations should disappear.
Nor do I think academic achievement is unimportant.
Hard work should be recognised. Knowledge should be valued. Academic standards should remain high.
But perhaps we need to widen our definition of achievement.
Let us celebrate the student who improves dramatically after struggling.
Let us celebrate the student who helps another student understand something.
Let us celebrate the student who develops a solution to a problem in their community.
Let us celebrate creativity, integrity, curiosity, resilience and service.
Let us give young people opportunities to fail safely, reflect, try again and discover what they are capable of.
Because one day, the examinations will end.
The certificates will be collected.
The graduation photographs will become memories.
And the student will have to face life.
When that happens, I hope we can say that our education did more than prepare them to pass.
I hope it prepared them to think, to adapt, to care, to create, to contribute and to keep learning.
Perhaps that is the education we should be pursuing.
Not an education that simply teaches people how to pass life’s examinations.
But an education that helps people learn how to live.
Sunday Question
Think back to your own education.
What is something important that life taught you that no examination ever tested?
Perhaps the answers to that question can teach us something about what education itself is missing.
Life taught me that knowledge alone (which in reality can’t be fully attained in health) cannot make a good health care professional skills like compassion, resilience, learning from errors and audits, listening actively, research etc. Every client/patient is another textbook with a story to tell and new lessons to learn, meaningful health care is seeing every client beyond the common diagnosis.