"Competitions originated from particular leisure activities and exams were created to give students a benchmark on where they stood academically compared to the rest of the cohort. Competitions spur individuals of a sport to excel beyond their expectations and reach their limits. This is not wrong as it not only adds an importance to a sport, it also serves as entertainment for the masses. Samuel is right to say that exams are a comparison, but is too quick to conclude that it is all based on your genes. Education is given to every student and how much they gain from it is not based on their genes but on their hard work."
As no one has refuted my 1st post, I shall use my 3rd post to comment on another post.
I refer to Leon's comment on the origin of competitions and exams. Although the mentioned purposes may have been true, it is evident that present day has caused the purposes to steer towards personal achievement and glory. This is further amplified as MOE and schools give out awards to students who excel in their studies. Thus, the purpose of these activities has been polluted to a new purpose.
If you claim that we should be going back to these original purposes, then it should stand that the exams should be based on the knowledge that we have gathered from the lessons during the school term, so that we know a true benchmark of the acquired knowledge, and where we stand compared to others. Thus, it should follow that studying the days before exams should be banned as it crams information into our brains outside class time, and the information here is only stored in our short-term memory. This will be considered "cheating" as it does not show us a true benchmark of our intelligence, as our answering of questions in the exam would be based on the information we have gathered the days before the exam, and would be forgotten once the exam has passed, as the information is only stored in our short-term memory.
Thus, if we ban caffeine and drugs, we also have to ban studying the days before the exam, if we want to adhere to the initial purpose of exams, which is to give students a benchmark, which should be based solely on each individual's skill to store information. This is highly unfair to certain people, as their ability to store information in long-term and keep it ingrained in their brain is all based on birth, and somewhat like Samuel said, genes, which I also touched on in my 2nd post.
Therefore, the use of external means to better ourselves in competitions and exams should be allowed to give others a chance.
-Clement Yue (31)
