IIT - JEE (main and advanced), CET, Comedy-X, BITSAT, AIEEE, NEET, so on and so forth. How many exams 12th class students have to write these days!!?? Sheer torture. Why does not anybody think of adopting the international model? Standardized tests (like SAT, GRE, GMAT) to assess the relative capability and an application process which includes essays, recommendations and which gives credit to projects done by students out of their own interest, extracurricular etc. Just shifting to standardized tests is a good start.
Making students write these many exams on top of grueling but mostly meaningless 12th board exam plus the perennial pressure cooker environment is not healthy at all.
It's funny that children of NRIs are admitted into Indian colleges almost in the same manner via SAT, GMAT etc. It's only the students in India have to go through this torture.
Standardized tests are pretty good. Those of us who have taken them know that after a few weeks of prep your score hits a stable value. Additional prep does not help much. What you score on your last practice test is close to what you can expect to score in the actual test. So they are reasonably effective for relative ranking of academic ability.
Problem with so many exams and unbearable pressure cooker environment is - the most important thing, that is actual learning takes the back seat when everyone's focus is on how to game and beat the system.
Some of my friends who returned to India after a few years in the US have started sending their US born kids back to the US for the college education. I highly recommend that approach. Please spare them from this madness. Just let them study for the unavoidable stupidity called 12th board exam, let them prepare for SAT and focus on the application process to decent schools in the US than to be part of this multiple exam madness. Even for others I recommend the same. When the cost of education has gone up so much in India, probably US is not that expensive and it is definitely worth it. At least the system is better and certainly not a pressure cooker. Please do this for your kids and they will surely be grateful to you for sparing them from being cooked alive in this madness.
(Copied from my Facebook status)
2 comments:
We were fortunate.It was not so in our time. The foolish educationists(!)are boiling our children in the Educational Pressure Cooker.
You are right Sunaath Sir. Till 1983, there was no CET in Karnataka. Just PUC board exams and govt. seats withing the state were granted based on your score in PCM/PCB. From 1984 they started CET. Now many many exams.
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