The Irony of Exams

Examination:

The testing of the proficiency or knowledge of candidates for a qualification by questions.

Why do we need to write exams?

In order to test our ability of understanding and applying the knowledge we’ve acquired by reading books or whatsoever. The point is to test what a particular INDIVIDUAL has acquired through his study. Ergo, his own interpretation on what he understood or studied has to be written in the exam. Because that’s the moment when you get to know what you’ve understood actually.

But now, what we do is all second hand interpretation and its all second hand knowledge even.

Because whatever we write in exams is either mugged up or learnt by heart from a study material or so. Firstly, the whole thought of this study material is itself a mistake. Because it refrains students from drawing out their own interpretation. And the worst part is that we study someone else’s interpretation or idea about a particular topic in the study material and we write that for exam. So that means that instead of thinking for our self and writing what we know, we are writing what some else has interpreted or written down.

I preferred calling irony because its original sense is lost. By and by it seems as if the word exam has become a cliché because we don’t actually do what the word or the whole dogma of what it actually stands for.