Examinations

Examinations are something that the human race can actually do without. What is in examinations? Who were the first ones who came up with examinations?

There are people who said, "If only I could go back in time, I'd murder the person who came up with the examinations idea." (NOTE: I used the word "IF". This is only an assumption. For those cyber-authorities out there, in no way am I implying that I am going to commit that heinous act. People nowadays, especially in law enforcing department, can be very tedious and particular about things. *Sheesh*)

Examinations originated in China about 2000 years ago. The main purpose of examinations are to gauge the cognitive abilities of a particular individual. Examinations are meant to see how well one can understand a particular subject and how much knowledge that one has acquired.

So, are examinations a necessity in our life? That I leave it to you to ponder for yourselves.

Although examinations play an important part in society, a lot of people have misunderstood the real purpose of having examinations. Many think that examinations are meant to gear you up towards a better future, or that examinations are to enable you to become a doctor, engineer, lawyer or so on. Many people still have the opinion that examinations are to determine how intelligent you are (or how stupid you are, depending on from which point of view).

Nevertheless, if the purpose of examinations were just to ensure you a better future, then we will merely be robots. It's not examinations that determine whether your future is bright or not. It's education and knowledge. Acquiring a lot of knowledge is important for a brighter future, not examinations actually. Unfortunately, people have often associated knowledge with examinations; the better you do in examinations, the more knowledge you have. Therefore, students would want to achieve straight A's in their examinations because that would mean that they have learnt a lot. So, what about those who score B's? Do we say that they have acquired less knowledge than those who scored A's?

Personally, I think that is a rather unfair justification. Just because one doesn't do well in examinations does not signify that he or she is unintelligent or did not acquire more knowledge. Other factors must be taken into account, such as the style of marking and many more.

Society has this mentality that if you have acquired the necessary knowledge, then you should do well in examinations (and thus you're intelligent). There are those who didn't do well in examinations, and yet they have an huge resource of general knowledge, which enables them to take part in competitions such as the National Science Quiz, debates and so on. Are they not intelligent in their own unique ways, too?

Whether are examinations necessary or not, they are here to stay. And as long as society doesn't scrape of the inappropriate mentality about examinations, there will be those "unintelligent" ones who would be shunned off in one way or another.

That is indeed a sad situation.