An exam paper does not measure emotional intelligence. It does not measure motivation, drive, dedication or the desire to succeed. It will not tell you if a student has a craving for knowledge, passion for learning. It will not tell you about their empathy or their passion for the welfare of their community. All examination papers that I’ve seen primarily measure whether or not you can obtain memorised information in a high-pressure environment. Alas, this is what our education system defines as the pathway to success.
Activities done on a student’s own initiative that may actually illustrate any of these characteristics are defined as “extracurricular.” If a student plays four different sports, volunteers at care homes, writes as a means of expression, all that is fantastic! Put it on the top of your personal statement, universities will love it. Even a student’s life outside of exams is now measured added up against others deciding who can contribute more to society based on how many community hours they’ve spent volunteering. What about those who stay at home on the weekends to nurse sick parents? The supportive friend who provides a gold mine of advice and support to those around them? Or if you are a teenager who finds solace in gardening? These are all great, sure, but what is that going to do for your college application?
Pitting students against each other like this is, in my opinion, destructive. The result of this pressure is that we strip away passion, and we’ve turned philanthropic activities into channels that translate into college admissions. No longer do we have a world of little athletes, do-gooders and clarinet players on their own initiative; rather, a big number of them are now doing it simply on the basis of looking good on entry applications to universities, and thus prioritising them as a result.
There are still students that exist with this drive, with this passion. In fact, I would say the majority of those that I have personally encountered want to succeed on the basis that they want to contribute their upmost capability to the world. However, I personally believe that this drive and desire is a result of an internal passion, one that comes from within — not from an external pressure that this is what you need to do good in the world.
What is education? When you look for the definition of the word education in the Oxford dictionary, you get two results. One is “a body of knowledge acquired while being educated,” synonyms including “enlightenment,” “cultivation” and “literacy.” The other is “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction,” synonyms including “coaching,” “bettering” and “drilling.” The current system of education has morphed from the initial definition to the second. Education has gone from an experience of personal enrichment to a universal necessity — from a pathway to understanding the world around us to cutthroat competition of statistics and grades. All students are measured by the same criteria, rather then having their strengths and weaknesses assessed individually. A quote that has circled around social media for years comes to mind: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its entire life believing that it is stupid.”
This is a phrase accredited to Albert Einstein, but regardless of the source, it heavily applies to not just our education system, but also the implications of holding a sea of individuals, each with their own individual passions, strengths, and journeys, to a single standard. There are certain students, such as myself, who want to pursue law because they love debate. They love expressing their ideas, they love the complexity of the system, and they love defending individuals who may not be able to on their own. However, because I don’t perform as well as on a math’s SAT paper as I could do in a courtroom, I may be stripped from the opportunity to succeed as much as I know I’m capable of.
A byproduct of this is that it may make a student apathetic as he/she would end up having no desire for education, no desire to succeed. And instead, drop out of school/college as soon as possible to pursue a life on their own accord. I’ve personally seen a multitude of beautiful minds — enriched with ideas of movies, movements and art — that are going to now have to be expressed through unconventional ways. A less extreme example would be that I personally experienced: that people will stray from subjects or concepts they once loved because they started getting graded on it. I have an endless fascination with literature, with language analysis, with creativity and with reading, but when I had this love condensed into an A or a B grade, it stopped being something I was passionate about, and something I used as means of competition to myself. And now I will see myself dropping a subject I’ve loved since a child because I have to take exams on it.
This brings about the question: what is academic success? For someone applying to America, such as myself, you would need a 1,550 SAT score, straight A’s, and a personal statement condensed with achievements in every area possible. While this would look fantastic to an Ivy League university, does it mean we are truly producing unique individuals, or clones? What about our individual passions, our individual journeys?
The writer is a student living in Cambridge, UK. She can be reached at [email protected], and on Twitter at AnnushehQureshi