On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 9:56 PM, ss<[email protected]> wrote:
> In India the exam system is like this.
>
> You stuff a poor child's head with gobbledygook for a year or more and then
> give him three hours to prove himself. Then use the result of that test to
> tell him that he is not good in math or biology and that he need not bother
> trying to enter a career that requires either.
IMO, there isn't much of a problem in the indian educational and
examination system in assessing who is clearly good and who is clearly
bad at a subject. It is when distinguishing the finer shades of grey
that it fails. For example, is someone who scores an 85 in biology
necessarily worse off than someone who scores an 87? While the likes
of the IITs have the luxury of conducting comprehensive exams to
separate the rice from the husks, most universities do not. They use
the high school leaving exam results as a "good enough" proxy that
works on the scale they operate in.
> The British invented this system (possibly in the 18th century) I believe to
> recruit people to work in their colonies - mainly India. And the rest is
> history.
The Chinese mandarin examination system is considerably older.
Thaths
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