Exams Ought to be Abolished from the Education System

I look forward to an intellectually stimulating exercise, and one that is happily non-partisan in nature! Dear DDOians, we've all been there haven't we? Either in High school or University, the anxious moment of walking into class, and not having any idea what can be in front of you. .. I think we all know what the nature of the exam is like. Something I think we can all connect with very easily! C1: Exams Exasperate Mental Health Issues My first argument is straight forward. Exams ought to be abolished as they torment the very minds it seeks to evaluate in the first place. Every year from High Schoolers to University members, charities, the University medical services themselves become flooded with students. The students often already have depression or anxiety for instance, and have added difficulty in studying. Its completely unfair. Some students don't even have any mental health issues, will develop them. For instance, a student with family stresses, work stresses, and school stresses, doing an exam can be the final straw that breaks the camels back. The overall goal of academic institutions is to educate the populace, and because exams damage students instead of enhancing their critical analysis, I think this is grounds for removal. Source: . http://www.telegraph.co.uk... C2: Exams Do Not Actually Show Intelligence Exams are utilized to show pure information recall in a given point and time, that point and time being when the exam is, and what the professor, or teacher opts to place on the exam. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually show how intelligent the said student is, only how excellent their memory is. Worse yet, is that the questions are subject to what the Professor or Teacher deems important to the course to be on the exam. If a student finds something else about the course interesting, and remembers that information over what the head of the class deemed important, its actually worse for the student. It makes them look like they've learned nothing, when in actuality they have. This is a frequent issue, as sometimes students will complain and appeal exams on the basis of material not even being taken up in class. Combine this argument with C1, and clearly exams at best only test how the student keeps their cool. If one can even say that. Source: . http://www.ascd.org... C3: The Same Exam Could Have Different Marks In a lot of cases, the exams are not marked by professors. Which can lead to some serious issues. For instance, if a grader is in a bad mood, and is marking essay exams, they might not actually give as many marks as is deserved, or vice-verse. Personally, I've been though this in my economics course in University. I noticed my grader didn't add the total marks right, and brought it into the professor to adjust the mark, instead of getting an additional bonus mark, she remarked the whole thing and my exam netted 10 more marks. These are not small discrepancies, and this is not the only time this has happened, it happens to thousands of students every year, which highlights how ineffective exams are. How are professors and teachers suppose to agree on what a student knows, when they cannot even agree among themselves what is worthy of 1,2, or 3 marks? The answer is they cannot. Source: . http://harvardmagazine.com... C4: Essays Are Much Better Tools of Evaluation With an essay, organizational skills, critical thinking, time management, research, spelling, and grammar skills are utilized within the work. The Professor/Teacher can make a much better evaluation of a students' skills within that paper than on an exam. Because students can ask their teachers/professors for help during their completing of the assignment, it leaves much less room for error on behalf of the student, but the student can work on their skills while completing the job (the professor can show them how to do research if need be). This cannot happen in an exam. The nature of an exam would require giving away an answer which defiles its very purpose should one of these skills be lacking in the student. The exam does not always utilize critical thinking, and it is a poor judge of time management skills (especially if the professor made the exam time and size impossible to complete, which often happens). With students on an exam, cramming is a common study method with little avail. Source: . http://www.dailymail.co.uk... C5: Cheating Lastly, exams can be cheated on. If someone plagiarizes an essay for instance, or falsifies a lab report, the methodology of the lab, and turnitin. com can detect if something is amiss. It is much easier to cheat on an exam and get away with it than it is an essay for instance, enhancing academic integrity. Upon asking students themselves, one paper points out that 59% of students cheated on an exam once, and 39% were repeaters cheating more than once. Compare this to essays, in which only 33% would cheat comparatively. Sure, cheating will always be an issue insofar that assignments will always be given, but if this simple solution enhances academic integrity just a little more, then its silly to continue with exams, and instead we should implement other assignments. Source: . https://charactercounts.org... Thank you! Over to my opponent.