Whole idea of percentages, grades for assessing learning is assumption of a fixed notion of knowledge, skills. That against a certain set of Qs that person is assumed to have a fixed kind of capability, as if they'll never change, grow, know more, do more
Why have we accepted barring someone from learning via this one time format, why are metrics, quantification used for representing a person's intellectual & creative capacity? Why create a permanance around that when learning is processual
Invention and society-wide adoption of concept of competitive exams, tests still baffles me.
Like seriously what conditions a society to accept creating a hierarchy around speed of someone's understanding of a concept under a time window & then gatekeeping access to knowledge
Anyone come across a "social darwinist" history of the concept of exams? Quantified learning assessments, standardised testing/exams
You've got to be a bit sociopathic to accept creating a hierarchy around speed of someone's understanding of a concept under a time window & then gatekeeping access to knowledge
Like barring someone to explore a domain, field or aspects of the world they want to deeply study about or are curious about based on how quickly and accurately they could regurgitate trivia about it. Wtf.
When will we disassociate learning & teaching from big buildings, enclosed spaces, credentialism, exams, tests and the idea that it's supposed to be done in fixed slabs? When will we deem quantification of learning via marks, percentages as anachronistic?
Whole concept of competitive entrance exams is nothing but arbitrary rate limiter for physical constraints of "limited seats" which usually translates into barrier for maintaining class divisions.
Its a sorting mechanism
It's completely unnecessary because of the nature of knowledge which is processual. Nobody's intelligence, creativity is "fixed" for life and certainly not via their test-taking ability to memorize heuristics.
Which is what these exams assume for gatekeeping
A person's "Genius" is all a matter of exposure to the right kind of learning material, resources curated for their habits of thinking, disposition.
What if with regards to education, skill, expertise society as a whole accepts that every single person is capable of being the best a person can be in a domain with the right resources, support & attention given as opposed to assuming someone is just inherently smarter/better
That anyone can learn/be taught anything if given enough kindness, patience, creativity & imagination in curating, tweaking resources & tools for them for a particular set of know-how, know-what and know-why of practices in a particular domain/field/profession
Every single thing that you learnt via books, lectures could be made available online via free open educational resources.
Entire curriculums, reading lists, assignments, platforms for discussion, collaborative reading, annotating, remote collaboration on projects
We need to figure out ways to remove the concept of competition and hierarchy for access access to edu, so getting rid of entrance exams, making curriculums and all their teaching material as creative commons licensed, as an open educational resource
We need platforms that assists people in curating their own curriculums collaboratively, form discussion groups and help on suggesting and collaborating on assignments, projects. Platforms to publish and consume research for free.
The whole idea of "weeding people" out based on fixed criteria of assessment of knowledge, intellect is barbaric and a blot in human civilisation worldwide, not just in India.