To all the foreigners that follow my rants, 10th grade is one of the most important years in a student's life in India. All year round, we have exams which count to the final exam, the board exam. We have the entire syllabus, all that is taught all through the year. As if that isn't tough enough, there are a LOT of rules to be followed during this exam. Basically, almost everything about this exam is different.

It's a nationwide exam. The same question paper goes to every school, different question papers for different boards, of course. And once the exams are done, the government pays qualified teachers to check these answer sheets at three different levels.

1. Examiner: They are the ones that do most of the correction and they get around 300 papers. I think they are paid 5 bucks for each paper, depends on quality of work though.
2. Moderator: They make sure that the examiner hasn't made any mistake in marking, and check the total. If a student is getting 100% marks, they try to reduce marks by closely checking the answer sheet, and they simply sign average papers. They get around 5 bundles of 300 papers each, from 5 different examiners. If an examiner has made any mistake, it's the duty of the moderator to report it to the Chief Moderator.
3. Chief Moderator: Pretty much the least-effort job. Well, I wouldn't know, since I have never met one. But, I hear, it's their job to double check the work of the examiner and moderator. Also, they have to consider a moderator's reports. It's also their job to cut marks when a moderator is not able to. I'm guessing they get a lot of papers.

Last night, when my mother wanted to see if I was actually studying, she decided to ask me questions. I had nothing to fear, since I had actually studied (well, I had to, computer wasn't working) She started with definitions.

Now, I try to avoid memorizing and try and actually understand the concepts, so I knew the definitions pretty well. But, when I gave the answer, my mom corrected me.


I see no difference in the meaning of both answers. It's not as if I dumbed down the language either, I used all the important words. But my mother still told me not to write that in the exam and told me to memorize what was in the book.

Now, that's just absurd. Why waste time memorizing an one-line answer which you can write yourself since you actually know what it is? I would understand if I had said something like "An element is a thing that has only one type of atom and cannot be broken into any smaller pieces." but, that's not the case. The answer isn't wrong, I just changed the sequence.

But then, she told me that sometimes, the board examiners let others check the answer sheets. The examiners receive a model answer sheet, so that they know what the right answers are. And apparently, these helpers of the examiners, aren't really teachers, and just cross check the answers in the answer sheet with the model answer sheet.

So, I lose 1 mark, just because I changed the order of the sentence, which is perfectly fine by the way, and it still means the same thing?

Also, why are these people allowed to help the examiners? What qualifications do they have? In my opinion, they're dumber than a piece of wood if they don't know the difference between

"A substance which is made of only one kind of atom and which cannot be divided into any simpler substances is called an element." and

"An element is a substance which is made up of one kind of atom and which cannot be divided into anything simpler." You know what the difference is?

NOTHING!

And if my mother, who isn't a teacher or anywhere in the education system, knows about this external help that examiners get, the moderators and chief moderators definitely know about it. And if that's the case, shouldn't these examiners be removed from the list? And if they don't have enough examiners for an exam of this magnitude, why try to do it? Why jeopardize the future of students (not parrots that get every answer right because it's just copy paste from the book) because of one oddly framed sentence?

Oh and if the moderators think 300 exam sheets is too much for one examiner, WHAT ABOUT THE 300+ PAGES WE HAVE TO STUDY? If the examiner is allowed external help, why aren't we? And uhm, aren't the examiners teachers? Why do they even need a model answer sheet? Shouldn't they know all the answers as well?

Or is it that they just teach us from the books and dictate the answers while not knowing the answers themselves? Now, teachers will say that they know what they teach and they can explain any answer to us. But hey, so can I, only reason I can't do that is because the board expects EVERY SINGLE WORD RIGHT FROM THE BOOK, JUST THE WAY IT IS!

PS: I'm not trying to offend any teachers, I like some of my teachers because they actually teach us well. But some are just there for nothing. They make the students read the lessons, find the answers, and write them down. All those teachers do is, check our books (don't get me started on that, they don't even read, just put a tick mark) and mark our answer sheets. Is that the only reason we have teachers like this? Why bother, why waste the school's money, just replace them with online examinations.