By Pushpendra Singh and Archana Singh
As examinations come closer, the country gathers for Pariksha Pe Charcha. Children are asked to stay calm, not fear exams, and see them as a celebration. The advice sounds caring. The tone is reassuring. Yet the very need to repeatedly calm children makes us halt briefly.
Why has schooling become such a source of anxiety that children must be taught how to endure it? What kind of education system produces fear so regularly that reassurance becomes a ritual? And when stress is treated as a matter of mindset rather than structure, are we truly caring for children, or simply asking them to adjust with a system we are not willing to change?
Why are examinations losing meaning today?
There was a time when examinations had a purpose to create merit based on them. While knowledge was limited, textbooks were few, and classrooms were the main place where learning happened. Exams tested whether students had understood what they were taught. They were imperfect, but they made sense in that context. That context no longer exists.
At a time when information is abundant, and learning happens across platforms, the traditional examination increasingly measures endurance rather than understanding. Children can access explanations, examples and even problem-solving strategies way beyond the classroom. What remains scarce is not knowledge, but time to think, question and connect ideas.
In this context, exams feel disconnected from learning. They reward speed over thought, memory over understanding, and conformity over curiosity. They compress months of learning into a few hours and treat the result as a final judgment. A child’s ability to think slowly, ask questions, or make connections rarely finds space in this format.
We can observe the contrast in primary education. Where examinations have been reduced or removed in the early years, classrooms often become calmer and more attentive to the child. Learning is slower, mistakes are allowed, and fear does not dominate. Teachers observe, guide and respond instead of constantly ranking. These years recognise something important: children learn best when they are not afraid of being judged all the time.
Yet as children grow older, we abandon this understanding. Examinations return with greater force, carrying the weight of future, status and survival. What was once a tool becomes a verdict. Education narrows, even as the world outside becomes more complex.
In this sense, examinations are not merely outdated; they are increasingly out of place. They struggle to capture how learning actually happens today. Instead of supporting education, they often hollow it out, set learning into preparation for tests rather than engagement with ideas. This is not an argument against evaluation. It is a call to recognise that when examinations dominate education, they stop serving learning and begin to replace it.
The quiet harm of exam-driven learning
The exam driven learning is often defended as discipline, rigour, or even love. Parents are told that pressure prepares children for the real world. Schools speak of standards. Coaching centres promise security. All of this sounds reasonable, even responsible. Yet beneath this defence lies a quieter and more lasting harm, one that does not injure the body, but slowly wears down the inner life of children.
When education is reduced to marks, ranks and cut-offs, classrooms change their character. They stop being spaces of curiosity and become spaces of judgment. From an early age, children learn a simple truth: they will be measured. Their worth will be compared. Their future will be decided by numbers.
Curiosity must stay within limits. Questions are welcome only if they fit the syllabus. Thinking beyond the model answer becomes risky. Wonder is treated as waste. Doubt is corrected quickly. Mistakes are no longer moments of learning; they become evidence of failure. Slowly, fear replaces joy. Obedience begins to look like achievement.
(MY Teacher) Avijit Pathak has often warned that this system does not educate; it conditions. It produces what he calls ‘exam warriors’, children trained to endure pressure rather than understand ideas. They memorise, rehearse and repeat for years, without being invited to ask why something matters or how knowledge connects to life. Learning becomes a narrow tunnel, moving from one test to the next, leaving little room for reflection or meaning.
Even success offers no rest. High scores bring attention, but also anxiety, the fear of slipping, of disappointing parents, of losing a fragile status built on marks. Achievement does not produce confidence; it produces vigilance. Failure, meanwhile, is swift and public. A single poor performance can undo years of effort because a child’s worth has been reduced to a score. Children learn early that they are only as valuable as their last result.
When care begins to wound
What makes this system especially troubling is that it survives in the language of care. Parents believe pressure is love. Schools believe ranking is fair. Coaching centres sell certainty in a world full of fear and uncertainty. Together, they create an environment where children are no longer seen as lives unfolding, but as projects to be managed, investments expected to deliver results.
Childhood becomes something to be endured for the sake of a promised future. The present turns into a sacrifice.
John Dewey warned long ago that education cut off from lived experience becomes coercive. Learning, he argued, must grow from curiosity, dialogue and connection with the world. When education is reduced to rewards and punishments, it loses its moral purpose. What we see today reflects precisely this loss. Schools no longer help children make sense of society, injustice or uncertainty. They train them to navigate hierarchies, to follow rules, and to move faster than others. Speed matters more than depth. Obedience matters more than judgment.
Daniel Markovits helps us see another quiet cruelty at work. In exam-driven systems, success is framed as personal virtue and failure as personal fault. Structural inequalities, of class, caste, language, region and access, fade from view. Children internalise outcomes as destiny. Anxiety and shame become private burdens. Those who fall behind blame themselves. Those who succeed live in constant fear of falling.
When learning loses meaning
The damage does not stop at academics. It reshapes how children see themselves and others. Classmates become competitors. Learning becomes a race. Cooperation matters only when it improves performance. Children begin to measure their time, effort and even emotions in terms of outcomes. The question “What am I learning?” quietly gives way to ‘What will this get me?’
Meaning is postponed. Pressure fills the present. This is where exam-driven learning begins to meet despair. When learning loses meaning, pressure multiplies. Children are taught to obey before they learn to think, to compete before they learn to care, and to fear failure before they understand growth. Emotional distress finds little language in such spaces. Silence becomes common. Withdrawal is mistaken for discipline. Exhaustion is praised as dedication.
Despair does not arrive suddenly. It gathers slowly, quietly, often unnoticed. What we often miss is that this harm is not accidental. It is built into the design. An education system that values performance over persons will hurt those who fall behind and quietly wound even those who succeed. The harm lies not in a single bad exam, but in the everyday normalisation of fear as motivation.
What must change
The answer does not lie in abandoning evaluation altogether. Assessment has a place. But it must stop ruling education. The Policy reform must begin by lowering the stakes of single examinations, especially in school years. No child’s future should hinge on one paper written on one anxious morning. Exams must test understanding, not speed and memory alone.
Teachers need time and trust. They must be supported to slow down, to listen and to mentor, not merely to complete syllabi. Emotional well-being cannot be added as another task to already exhausted teachers; it must be built into how classrooms function.
Curriculum reform must take the humanities and arts seriously. These subjects help children live with failure, difference and uncertainty. They give language to fear and hope. They are not optional; they are essential.
Parents and institutions must confront a difficult truth: pressure does not build character. It builds silence. Learning rushed by fear comes at a deep cost. Children must be allowed to experience learning as a way of understanding the world, not merely as preparation for a competitive future. Education should help them grow into thoughtful, caring individuals, not just efficient performers.
Without such a shift, exam-driven learning will continue to cause quiet harm. It will produce anxious children and exhausted teachers, and something more troubling still, a society that mistakes pressure for progress, competition for merit, and success for care.
The author Pushpendra Singh is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Somaiya Vidyavihar University , Mumbai & Archana Singh is associated with Centre of Demography of Gender at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETEDUCATION does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETEDUCATION will not be responsible for any damage caused to any person or organisation directly or indirectly.
