Don't be let down at sad times, don't think God has forsaken you when life is tough, don't think that God will ruin you down to dust, it's just that he's polishing a Gem.
Someone very close to me messaged me once saying this. A thought just hits you sometimes as it did when I first came to know about the removal of examinations for grade 10 in India and the stark relation with the message somehow flashed upon me the perils of this decision. Well, at the onset it a very modern decision, very westernized perhaps... but as i believe that you cannot lift anything and everything from the west and just implant it in India. The conditions are so different here that things don't fit in and eventually the system collapses.
Removal of examination is more like running away from the battleground than facing it. We do not realize that there are tougher times that lie ahead and these sort of hurdles in life are just preparations for those. To that respect its not such a straight forward conclusion to make that it'd do good in the long run. In a developing country like India when there is so much pressure on the system, take for example the applicants to seats ratio for any exam, say the JEE, CAT or IAS; there is no way out of it. You have to face it someday. Be it establishing a business or simply applying for a job at Mc Donalds, there is so much competition that running away now is just hitting yourself with an axe. Why should you weaken yourself.
Besides this, in this country where many times you have teachers who do not have the right knowledge of their subject, teachers who are so stubborn that they don't even listen to you if you have a different point of view, who do not let you question and think out of the box... The entire system of internal assessment will collapse. When there are teachers who ask you to come to private tuition if you can even hope to get some marks from them, in such a scenario the system would be no more transparent than the computer screen you are looking at right now. And then the entire thought just appears lousy and foolish. A centralized marking system at least ensured that you were judged correctly and were at better hands.
However, I agree with the intention, which is one of reduction of pressure from students. It's is mighty true according to me both from experience and information that the amount of knowledge one can gain without pressure is more in terms both quantity and quality. But then there can be other ways to do it. For example, parents should be taught that academics is not the end of life. I mean there is so much more to it and to that end various people have myriad different talents which should be encouraged. The best managers to my mind were never very good students. Then there are musicians, artists, advertisement managers, hotelling industry, consumer durables etc etc etc which requires so much of different talent. I guess that there is just too less information among people. If students could be shown that they can develop their life and career in something they like and is close to their heart then the "pressure" will automatically decrease because the one would enjoy doing what he does. For example if somebody enjoys mathematics and not guitar, ask him to become a guitarist.... I'm sure he'll appear as vulnerable to pressure as anyone else....
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