Why Exams Matter - and Don't Matter at All
As I walk around the end-of-year exam venue in silent, unhurried stealth, I am at the same time awed by the intensity of the experience that 'final exams' presents, amazed by the logistical complexity of ensuring exam integrity (which, ironically, relies on administrators assuming that none of us has any), and sobered by the fact that, after around 12 years of formal schooling there are some that will stumble at this most significant (and simultaneously completely irrelevant) hurdle - for when a child fails a final exam she or he is as much failed as they themselves have failed. Exams are, at once, a critical benchmark that holds systemized education together, and a completely meaningless measure of momentary knowledge. Exams act as a systemic gate-keeper, designed to fit young people into boxes. I often wonder why cattle walk so willingly into an abattoir, compliant and oblivious of the system that is there to chop them, box them, and ship them off for sale. A cynic may re...