India’s Obsession with Marks and the Absurdity of Arbitrary Questioning
Date: 13-08-2025
In much of India, a child’s worth is too often measured in marks — stark numbers printed on report cards, whispered in drawing-room conversations, and compared across cousins at weddings. These numbers aren’t just about academic performance; they have been twisted into symbols of family pride or shame. A few extra marks can inflate egos, while a slight dip can wound reputations.
For many parents, the score becomes the goal, not the learning. They push their children relentlessly — sometimes out of love, often out of fear — into a race whose rules they don’t fully understand. The irony? Most parents never stop to ask whether the questions their children are being forced to answer have any real value in life, career, or skill-building.
From school to college to government recruitment, exams are dominated by formulaic questions and memory-based evaluations. Students are not truly being tested on their understanding, creativity, or ability to apply concepts — they are trained to recall and reproduce. The “topper” is often not the most skilled or innovative, but the one who mastered the grind of rote learning most effectively.
School and College: Learning by Memory, Not by Mind
In schools, students are drilled to recite textbook definitions, memorize diagrams, and reproduce long answers word-for-word. A science exam may reward the exact phrasing of Newton’s laws more than the ability to apply them to a real-world problem. An English paper may value perfect reproduction of “model answers” over original thought.
College is often no better. In many universities, exams are predictable: question papers follow a set pattern, and students pass by cramming past years’ papers. Entire coaching industries thrive on “important questions” lists, reducing education to a scavenger hunt for predictable marks rather than a pursuit of genuine knowledge.
Competitive Exams: The Narrow, Random Funnel
The problem extends into recruitment tests for government jobs, where the syllabus sprawls across current affairs, obscure general knowledge, tricky logic puzzles, and advanced mathematics — regardless of the actual job requirements.
An aspiring ticket inspector or train driver might be asked who invented JavaScript, the most abundant element in Earth’s crust, or the divisibility rules for an arbitrary six-digit number. Similarly, candidates for clerical roles may have to memorize the membership count of the WTO in a given year or the origin of a homeopathy principle.
Such questions are less about assessing ability and more about filtering candidates through an arbitrary sieve. The Ministry of Railways and other bodies claim these papers are “based on educational qualification and work profile,” but in practice, they reward those who can memorise massive amounts of unrelated trivia — not necessarily those best suited for the work.
The Emotional Toll
From Class 6 to UPSC aspirants, the story is the same: pressure, cramming, and the fear of failure. Families sacrifice comfort and savings, expecting results. Students shrink their worlds to libraries, coaching centres, and late-night study sessions under the glow of phone screens.
Social lives, hobbies, and exploration take a back seat to the endless loop of revision and mock tests. Many young people grow up believing that their value is defined solely by a rank or percentage. Those who falter in this race often carry a lifelong sense of inadequacy — not because they lack ability, but because they failed to play by the rigid, memory-based rules.
What We Should Be Testing Instead
The obsession with marks is a cultural habit, but it is also a systemic design flaw. Exams in schools, colleges, and recruitment boards should shift focus to:
- Application of knowledge in practical scenarios.
- Problem-solving and critical thinking over recall.
- Creativity and innovation, not just pattern-following.
- Skills relevant to the actual role for which one is being tested.
Until then, India will continue to produce millions of students who can solve equations and recite facts on demand, but who may never have been given the space to think independently, take risks, or solve real problems.
Right now, the system is less about learning and more about surviving a game — one where the rules are rigid, the questions arbitrary, and the scoreboard is the only thing that seems to matter.