EXAMINATIONS IN SCHOOL AND HUMAN HEALTH

Prof. B. M. Hegde,
Vice Chancellor,
MAHE University,
Manipal-576119.

I was thrilled to read the recent report that examinations and ranks are, to be abolished up to the age of fifteen years of a child's life, beginning from 2002. I have written and have struggled to impress upon the powers-that-be of the grave threat to human health and, even human behaviour resulting from examinations of the type that we have inherited from the British.

One would certainly wonder about the connection between examinations in schools and human health. Many are the believers that examinations should be good for health. Nothing could be farther from truth. First and foremost examinations fill one with fear, anxiety, uncertainty, dejection after failure, depression, and pride after getting a good rank. These negative feelings are the ones that are now recorded even in the modern western system of medicine as the pal bearers of deaths due to the great killers like cancer, heart attacks and what have you. Unfortunately, there is no place for the essence of education, humility, a health tonic, in this whole process.

Education should aim at transforming a human child, born with only two innate instincts of self-preservation and procreation, into a social animal with altruism and enthusiasm. It should encourage the child to explore all the avenues of human endeavour to bring out its best. Education should be the manifestation of the best already embedded in man. Unfortunately, the present examination system does just the reverse. The system tries to make him memorize a lot of information which, many a time, does not have much relevance to real life situations and, in the bargain, curbs the child's curiosity and creativity. Examinations have become the be all and end all of the whole system.

Textbooks are written with the sole motto of giving spoon feeding to students to pass their examinations; one wonders how popular such books are among the students. There are now publishers vying with one another to publish only such books. I wonder what would happen to mankind after a few years with no creativity left in any of the end products of the present system of education.  We seem to have forgotten wisdom in the midst of knowledge and even the knowledge is only accumulation of information. In short, education has become synonymous with collection of information!

Be that as it may, our concern in this article is about human health and the system of examinations. I shall try and explain the sequence of events in lay man's language so that the reader could grasp the seriousness even if one is not medically trained. One could easily understand that every examination, right from the kindergarten days, is a very stressful situation, not only for the hapless child but also for the grown up parents. The latter are most anxious that the child should do well to get a rank to climb up the "educational" ladder. Parents, probably, spend sleepless nights when the child is small and later both the student and the parents spend sleepless nights burning their midnight oil.

What happens when one gets too much anxiety on a chronic basis? Man has been endowed by nature with a very friendly system, the autonomic nervous system, that comes to his help in any emergency to keep him out of danger as long as possible. This evolved mainly during man's existence as a forest dweller where the main cause of death, other than old age, was predation. If one is injured by a wild animal this system, predominantly the sympathetic part of the autonomic system, tries to keep him alive temporarily till such time that either he gets outside help or could recover on his own. For reasons that are not very clear nature intended this system to work only on a short-term basis. On long term stimulation this very friendly system itself could be man's enemy numero uno and eventually could even kill him! In short, the sympathetic system could blow hot and cold from the same mouth.

In the normal course the sympathetic system looks after man in any emergency viz.: fight, flight or freight.  To give an example when one sees any danger coming on the sympathetic system gets stimulated and gets a chemical messenger secreted by the adrenal gland (adrenaline) which raises the blood pressure, races the heart enhancing its force of contraction, in addition, to increase blood output. If one has to run for life in that situation the chemical thus secreted would be digested in the skeletal muscles used for running and gets burnt out. On the contrary, when one gets frightened of an examination, the same chemical comes pouring out into our blood but can not be burnt out in the working muscles. The resulting accumulation of this chemical in the long run tries to destroy almost every system of the body. 

Children and their parents develop cold hands and feet even when they think of an examination. They get palpitations in the chest and sweaty palms and soles. Their mouth dries just before an oral examination and the hair, at times, stands erect. All these signal the stimulation of the sympathetic system. If one observes them breathing one could see the fast, laboured breathing. While these external signs are alarming in themselves what happens inside is still more worrying.

The adrenaline and its other cousins stimulate the heart and also redistribute the circulation to overcome physical danger. (there is no physical danger here)  The damage, therefore, on all the above mentioned sites, when repeated over long periods of time could be permanent. In addition, the blood vessel constriction raises the blood pressure, which, of course, comes down temporarily, but we still do not know the link between this transitory rise and raised blood pressure in later life. Similarly to give man extra energy to run in the face of danger, adrenaline is made to release stored sugar from the liver glycogen stores, raising the blood sugar transiently. Again the relation between this and later onset of diabetes is another moot point. Lastly as the elevated sugar gets burnt in the muscles, it lowers the blood potassium level which could be potentially dangerous.

Similar changes occur in the steroid hormone secretions and many other parts of the body. In short every attack of anxiety is an invitation for certain body parts to suffer irreparable damage. Repeated attacks of anxiety could lead to illnesses of all kinds. In addition the anger, frustration, depression, and hatred that the examination system produces in many students and their parents are now thought to be at the root of all killer diseases. 

With all these risks what does the examination system measure in a student? It does not measure his aptitude, his creativity, his level of maturity, his comprehending capacity, his skill in managing real life problems, his humility that is the essence of a cultured man's life in society, his insight into another's problem, and his suitability for any vocation. Examinations simply check the students' memory power and his capacity to replicate textbook information onto the answer books. The earlier the system changes the better not only for students and teachers but also for the parents.

In this narration we did not go into the area of corruption in the system. We never teach our students the motto that it is "better to fail than to cheat". Since success is measured by passing the examinations we are condemned to live with all sorts of corrupt practices in every examination from the school to the highest level. This results many times in chronic guilt feeling in the culprit adding to his misery. Thank God many of us do not have a conscience to feel the guilt anyway. That is why many of us are externally happy about our achievements. I am reminded of what Winston Churchill once said, " it is better to deserve than to get." The other fall out of this system of corruption is that the "poor" students who can not pay in those situations get punished. Corruption, like in any other field, is a double-edged weapon.

This kind of competition taught early in life remains with man wherever he goes. This hatred becomes a part of man's life and he hates everyone in this world. The latter is the reason for all ills of society. Crime, suicides, divorces, underworld activity, mal-practices, unethical business practices, and all the societal vices could be traced to this early bad blood in school. If only we could teach our young impressionable minds the need for co-operation we would have had a heaven on earth.

Earlier this devil of an examination, in the present form, is terminated, at least up to the age of fifteen, the better for mankind. Assessment in education should be continuous and should also be teacher evaluation coupled with peer evaluation. Creativity, humility and insight into other's problems should be the key words in assessment. Education then would realize its goal as enunciated by Adam Smith in 1644, as that activity which prepares a man "to act justly, skillfully, and magnanimously under all circumstances of peace and war." It would also bring out the best in man that is already in him.