2 posts tagged “education”

My little daughter just listened to Bach's Barndenburg Concerto 6 and refuses to accept that it is anything but Little Einstein that she watches on the computer, that features the piece.

That is the risk of incorporating profound pieces into banal everyday events, however educative.

Exams

The CBSE board's school leaving certificate exam (translation: XIIth std. public exam) begins today.  When I went to drop V at her school , the road was jam packed with all kinds of vehicles and parents waiting outside after having deposited their wards at the exam-hall.   What struck me most was the look of terror in most of the parents' faces.  There was pin drop silence, some parents were biting their nails, a few others sitting in front of the little pillayar temple at the entrance, deep in prayer and a few more trying to look cheerful, but their hearts quaking their entire being.  Oh, God, I thought to myself, will I go through this too?

As usual, the wheels spun.  I studied in a state board school (Anglo-Indian until Xth), and having not scored as much as I had expected in the X std. public exam, I had put in every possible effort into the school-final public.  I had finished studying the entire portions in December and revised and re-revised until D-day.  And on the first morning of exams, I remember being in panic because there was a big blank in my head, and I believed I had forgotten everything.  Which was far from the case, once I started writing the exam, but I still get palpitations at the memory of the day.  Math was especially excruciating - I was sure I was going to pass-out with all the dy/dx's staring at me from the question paper.   From then on, every exam continued to haunt me.  In W.C.C., at I.I.T., my GRE, TOEFL, TSE, Qualifiers at SU...  they continue to bully me in nightmares now.

But something good came out of it too.  I have grown to believe that exams are not the ultimate shaping factor in life.  Scoring a century in Math, or being the topper in school does not really make you knowledgeable or intelligent by a long shot.  If any, it gives you a false sense of self-worth, which when thwarted (it WILL be, in real life) can plummet your confidence into the netherworlds.  This I can say from personal experience.  The self-esteem that burrowed deep after I discovered that the school-first award does not make you a genius is just about beginning to slowly wake up from rock-bottom.  And I am handling it with extreme caution lest it decides to call it a day and goes back to rockier-still areas.

I hope my daughter does not grow to believe that studying for exams is more important than learning.  I hope she gets more education out of school than I did.

And I hope I don't join the ranks of the nail-biting parents I saw outside school today.