As a 10th grader, I hear this word at least 50 times a day.

Even the teachers, they hardly care if we understand the lesson/concept, they just tell us how to get the most marks out of it.

And the students are no different. I've seen students memorize mathematical problems. There's a limit, and these kids are way past it. I mean, some problems are fine, you need to see how it's solved a few times to completely understand it (geometric theorems and their proofs, mostly) but you don't have to go as far as to memorize.

And lately, it's all anyone cares about.

"Mom, look I built my own robot."

"Forget the robot, it's not going to get you marks. Go study."

When the idea for school came into the minds of the Ancient Greeks, Romans, Indians, Chinese etc. I don't think they wanted students to get marks. They wanted students to get knowledge.

I'm not even going to talk about the syllabus, that's retarded enough. But, the whole mark system is downright stupid. To be honest, the entire examination system is stupid.

I know, exams are supposed to test our knowledge and keep a check if we're actually studying. But, it really doesn't test our "knowledge". There are a lot of intelligent kids in my class, who are never classified as intelligent by the teachers. Why? Because they never score above 70% or 80%.

It's not like they're street-smart. One of them got 92 percentile in an IQ test whereas the kids who get 90% in exams only got 70 percentile or so. Again, it's not like IQ matters either. But, I'm just saying, these kids are legitimately intelligent.

But, that's the kind of influence that our education system has on us. It's not our fault that we're so mark-obsessed. It's not our teachers' fault for teaching us about marks instead of the subject. It's just that idiot's fault who designed this entire system. (I've been trying to find out who that evil genius is, putting millions of kids through this hell, but sadly, the Internet is not helping)

We, as a whole, have started rating students based on their marks. Right now, no one cares about talents. Sure, even in school we have talent based activities but guess what? They're all for a subject, which is graded, and doesn't count towards the overall report. Which means, the parents don't allow their kids to spend more time on it than necessary and so, all talent is lost.

As you can see, I'm trying to bring about a change, although small, by writing a blog. And whenever I tell this to my parents or friends, they just say the only way out of the system is to beat the system.

Well, after I'm done with 10th, I'll be busy with 12th, and then with college. By the time I'm done with my education, I seriously wouldn't give a shit about the education system. That's typical Indian mentality, if it doesn't bother me, I don't need to do anything about it. And I really wouldn't care about the kids who would be complaining about it when I'm done. I guess that's why today's grown-ups don't want their kids to complain about school either.

So, in our schools, the smart category includes people that get 90% in their exams, not people that have brains. To be honest, the only reason I'm considered to be "smart but a waste" is because I used to get good grades in 5th grade or so and I don't any more.

And EVERYTHING is done based on marks. As in, if there's a workshop where students are invited from certain schools and only 4 are allowed to attend it, there's an exam conducted to determine who those 4 students are. And the exam, like any other, needs the memory of an elephant and skills of a parrot, so, the same kids are sent to competitions, workshops etc and others get no chance.

I shouldn't be talking about that though because I'm one of the students who always represents the school in competitions. But, that's only because I'm in a school that doesn't have too many kids, so the teacher herself picks the children who get to go to these events.

Bottom line is, we're all becoming a mark-oriented society and that needs to change.


PS: I asked the studious kids in my class a simple question

2² x 2⁰

and as expected, I got the wrong answer, 0. We learned about the law of indices in 7th grade. If the studious kids don't remember that x⁰ = 1, what's the point of memorizing?