Examination, The New Discovery

I am hitting the nail right on the head from the beginning. I, Aboagye Jeff, trust no more in the education system of Africa, Ghana to be specific.

The focus of our education with regards to the examination has been lost centuries down and it is nowhere to be found. Come to think of the number of graduates we have in the nation graduating from all the renowned tertiary institutions across the nation and yet there is no sign of development. It is so pathetic that lecturers have now develop a new form of punishment for tertiary students and they have surprisingly tagged it “Examination”.

It is an open secret to some extent that you can’t punish tertiary students as you may punish the senior high and junior high school students, therefore, lecturers, through examination, punish tertiary students. Please read with me a message from a lecturer to his/her students as they prepare to write their mid-semester exams “Hello everyone. You are to come to LE460 tomorrow with any material that you think you will need to write the paper. Mobile phones, laptops, desktop and even lawyer or parents if you wish. Any textbook in the world is welcome. Come let’s have fun. Please put the above on the class page.”

What logical conclusion will you draw from the above message?

My dear reader, it is not about whether you agree with me or not, is about we facing the reality. Nowadays, students go to examination halls with fear simply because they are afraid they will trail/fail the paper they have not even written. Failure is always anticipated before students write exams and it does not surprise me that students trail when the results are out. Because of the panic lecturers instill into students prior to examination, students are now devising ways and means to escape the trap set by lecturers to fail them during examination and as a result we have a lot of graduates in the nation who actually have not graduated.

There is a counter of instructions from parents and lectures all directed to students. Parents will instruct their children to go to school and study and make sure they pass their examinations and when they come to school the lecturers will counter that instruction by telling the students “We will meet in the exams hall”, which means “You will pass and see”. At the end who suffers? We the students. This has caused a lot of harm than help to the nation as a whole and that is why we are always enjoying “merry-go-round” instead of “merry-go-forward” in terms of development.

The cankers in our education system are numerous that a single article cannot parade them all. With this article, I hope to draw your attention to an open secret in our tertiary institutions where lecturers have now made a new discovery on how to punish tertiary students and have tagged this discovery “EXAMINATION”.

I want to conclude by saying, failure in examination can never determine your success as an individual. To be successful, know your PASSION, PURSUE it and make it a REALITY and to develop as a nation, lets change our education system.