Exams should not be timed

:warning: This was written for a workshop on blogging, back in 2017. Ideas may or may not be up-to-date!

Why Time Them?

In a recent TED talk (Let’s teach for mastery, not scores), Salman ‘Sal’ Khan, founder of Khanacademy.org addressed one of the most common woes of the average student: Test scores. Such a statement has ‘cliché’ written all over it but surprisingly, it’s not mainstream. Yes, ranting about the education system is mainstream. In fact, ranting is mainstream in any case but not so mainstream is giving solutions. The focal point of the talk was that even the brightest students have gaps in their learning. The fact that those gaps accumulate over time is tormenting for the teachers and even more so for the students. To tackle the issue, Sal proposed that schools should allow students to master the syllabus before moving on to the next one. The moment he uttered those words, I knew he had the ultimate solution. There are a lot of precedents for this structure. It’s the same way that martial artists master their current ‘belt’ before leveling up. I was appalled as to why we were not using it since the start of the modern education system. A lot of posts come up, or rather used to, on my Facebook feed with the same bland statement starting universally with ‘Our education system…’ And using the permutation of the following three words: ‘Intelligence’, ‘Memory’ and ‘Tests’. By now even the most indigenous of Amazon tribes should know what is wrong with our system. The focus of this blog is a solution analogous to argument set up by the aforementioned TED talk. In exams, where we do test memory, students usually can encounter problems remembering the similar question they did in past papers. Here, an intelligent, or more aptly, an adaptable student can carve out a fresh solution/derivation by starting from the basic definitions, formulae etc. during the exam. This practice has helped me on various occasions during my assessments and exams. But I was able to do it only after I had completed the previous ‘easier’ questions. But personal retrospections made me realize that the concepts I derived during the exam were much better retained and understood than those I had memorized (read: learned by rote). This brings me to my Eureka moment, that the way we should teach for mastery regardless of age groups, the same way we should allow students to bring out their full potential during exams. And that is only possible by removing the one obstacle that sieves among even gifted students on the basis of an attribute as fundamental as their writing speed. Yes! What I am suggesting is, why time them? Why time exams when you can allow pupils to engage in active thinking while giving the exam. This model of examination can be expected to synergize with the above mentioned educational framework. No learner will ever have to rush through any part of their intellectual phase.