Exams and Sex!!

The nature of examinations and its correlation with sex

What are examinations? What purpose they achieve in the learning process? Why do examinations have the importance they have? Do good scores in exams necessarily imply the intended learning has taken place? Education researchers have tried to answer many of these questions and there is a fair understanding about the pros and cons of many examinations which students take during their course of schooling. But can a real life context shed light on the process of examination in schools and colleges?

Let us look at the process of evolution by natural selection closely. It’s not difficult to agree that procreation is central to evolution without which a species will get eliminated from the gene pool. In order to achieve procreation many mechanisms are in place for various organisms but we will restrict to the domain of procreation in humans. Humans have been procreating for many thousands of years as evidenced by our current population. But what is the driving force for humans to procreate? Do most humans procreate with a conscious thought of replicating their genes? Or is procreation a consequence of indulging in the pleasurous act of sexual intercourse? It appears that evolution has smartly used sexual pleasure as bait for people to procreate. But humans who understood the underlying principles of evolution, became aware of the process which they are a part of, invented a clever way to indulge in sexual activity without the consequence of bearing children – the contraceptives. In essence, if evolution has used sexual pleasure to achieve procreation, humans have learnt a way to maximize pleasure and not fulfill the primary purpose for which evolution made sexual activity pleasurous in the first place.

But what is all this to do with the nature of examinations in schools and colleges? Let us try to highlight some key similarities between procreation and learning. As evolution is primarily concerned with procreation, the process of schooling is primarily concerned with learning. The way evolution has chosen an indirect process to achieve its goal of procreation; the schooling system has chosen an indirect process to achieve its goal of facilitating learning in children- the examinations. Yes, the purpose of sexual intercourse correlates with the purpose of examinations. The former is a bait to achieve procreation while the latter is a bait to achieve learning. This leads us to a very pertinent question – Has examinations succeeded in achieving what it was intended to achieve? This is the where the role of contraceptives will help shed light on the question. To reiterate, contraceptives have helped to maximize pleasure but not fulfill the primary purpose for which evolution made sexual activity pleasurous in the first place. It does not require a leap of imagination to see a similar phenomenon in the context of examinations and learning. Though examinations were conceptualized to use as bait to achieve learning, our children, schools, teachers, parents and the entire support system of tutorials have hijacked the primary purpose and is almost entirely focused on maximizing marks in examinations even if it means that it comes at the cost of true learning. It’s not surprising that such misplaced priorities have resulted in the production of graduates and post-graduates with their marks in high 90’s but not skilled enough to meet the requirements of the workspace. In essence, the way we want sex but not children, we want to excel in exams but not learning.

Though sex and exams correlate very well, there is one key difference however. If sex is pleasurous, an exam is nothing close to that. If at all, it’s quite the opposite!!