Exam versus your life
• Are exams more important than your life?
• What if you have to choose between your marks and your familiy's health? What will you choose???
☆On one hand government is requesting people to stay at home and on other hand they are forcing 25 lakh students to give exams. India's recording 70000 covid cases every day! In this situation, is conducting exams like JEE and NEET that gathers so much crowd a wise idea? But these exams have been postponed multiple Times. If covid doesn't go away are we going to waste our entire year?
☆ Why are students not ready to give exams?
1. Safe transport and Logistics: 50 kilometres 100km sometimes 400 kilometres. That's how much students have to travel for this exam. That's India's current reality! there are too many people but very few centres. Northeast and Bihar are flooded. Public transport is not back to normal. Not everyone can afford private vehicles. Even after travelling so much lodging in another City, eating outside, and staying safe during this pandemic is not feasible for everyone. Social distancing is a myth! There is chaos during exam and extra precaution is necessary. Just making students leave a bench empty is not enough. Many students will not travel alone they will bring their parents also and this extra crowd make the situation worse. And we are not prepared for that!
2. Unanswered questions: If a student comes with high temperature at the centre then what is going to happen with him? How will the question paper be sanitized? Entry protocols are in place but what about maintaining social distancing while leaving the centre? We Indians thing that circles outside shops are foolish, we take everything lightly! What about the kids who live in contaminated zone? Have they failed before giving the exams? If somebody sneezes during the exam, have they failed before giving the exam? What about the kids who have asthma and can't wear mask for long time?
Before covid their were total 226 exam centres. These numbers need to increased to maintain effective social distancing. Today so many colleges and schools are vacant. Why can't they be used as additional exam centres? If there's so much unanswered questions then can we call this attempt a valid attempt?
3. Unfair advantage: Covid biggest victim is economy and directly or indirectly poor people are suffering. If the exams happened and many kids can't appear then the kids who appeared for it get an unfair advantage. It means if you can afford a private car to reach the centre that's 200 km away then you at least get a chance to try. But if you are poor you can't even afford to reach the centre then you don't even get a chance. On the other hand some students were ready to take risk and don't want to waste their time and year because no one will give you a guarantee that everything will be OK after November. Vaccine doesn't make a pandemic magically disappear.
• So what are the solutions? Should exam be postponed? If yes then till when? There is one very simple answer to this.
Until safety gets precedence over exam. Postponing exams again and again is not feasible. We have to understand the actual problems of the system. Because exams may get finished in some days but there is an interdependent process before and after it. Exams are postponed and New Year starts by January, is it possible to finish syllabus? What will happene to the batch of 2021.
The government can arrange it right now then the exam should happen at the earliest. But if they can't then it is a failure of the system and the student should not suffer because of it. And how did we arrived at this conclusion? Not by being emotional or by seeing the outrage on Twitter. Statistically if any Mega event happens chances are it will lead to spike to the covid cases and that's why these exams or any other Mega events that gathers so many people matters to students .
• Students are our future. it is important to have a conversation with them. It is important to understand their problems. This covid situation is a test for all of us and only when we empathize with each other we will be able to solve the problems better.
-MOUSMI SHRIVASTAVA
So nice keep it up 👍
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