More Creativity Needed

CS Lewis talks about the purpose of education and his point is education is to created good men and good citizen of this world. Yes I agree with his statement but still how come many people don’t grow up as a good men and citizen? Is there something wrong with our education? I think there is and I want to point out one of them.

I believe one of the mistakes at a higher education is the way they test what we know. So they have made up this system or curriculum known as the ‘exams’. The administration thinks it is the best to evaluate how much a student knows. This is not the best and perfect way to measure how much a student have learned. As college students we know what exams means. It means to take out the textbook in which we have not read for many weeks, trying to burrow notes from friends, asking the professor for a study guide (which is basically cheat notes), to study from 7pm to 4 am in the morning, cramming all the information which the professor wants, can’t wait to finish and after it’s done voila! It’s finished and never would I have to pick up another biology or a philosophy book in my entire life. You ask a student what have you learned from that class? I am not sure how many of us could even answer the question. The reason is because most of us only study for tests, quizzes and exams. Out of those times we never look at the book (might not be true for some). But here is the important thing of all, we do not even remember half of the things that was on the exams and we stupid enough to keep repeating the same old method again and again.

What are some alternatives for an exam? I really don’t know but I know that the current method doesn’t work well. Exams equals grade and that’s it, period. That is not purpose of education and there is no learning at all. I hope I could give an answer and maybe the administration should be more creative on how to make students learn effective in college.