Ikki and Imbu Have Examinations These Days!

A few days ago, my grandchildren, Ikki and Imbu, were preparing for their examinations. Last Saturday evening, my grandson Imbu came to our apartment carrying his Hindi books and notebooks. But there was a condition attached to his visit: he had to promise his parents that he would study Hindi while he was with us. Hindi was not his strong subject, and he needed some additional preparation before the examination.

After dinner that evening, Imbu asked his grandma to quiz him from his notebook. He would answer each question without looking at the written answers. My wife began asking him the questions, occasionally trying to jumble their order. Suddenly, Imbu interrupted her.

“Please ask them in sequence.”

That little request caught my attention.

I was sitting nearby, watching television, but the conversation between my wife and grandson gradually drew my ears away from the television. I began listening carefully to the way he was answering. It soon became apparent that he was not really trying to understand the questions; he was memorising the question-and-answer pairs exactly as they appeared in his notebook. If the questions were presented in a different order, he became uncertain.

Then came the question:

“संज्ञा किसे कहते हैं?” — “What is a noun?”

Imbu hesitated. He struggled to recall the answer.

Without thinking much, I interrupted and gave what I understood to be the answer:

“किसी व्यक्ति, वस्तु, स्थान, प्राणी, गुण, स्थिति या भाव के नाम को संज्ञा (Noun) कहते हैं।”

Imbu immediately corrected me.

“Bajey, I have to write the exact answer that my teacher has given in the notes. Otherwise, the teacher will cut my marks.”

I fell silent.

For a moment, I was more shocked by that sentence than by his inability to answer the question. The child knew that there was an answer to the question, but he also knew that his own words might not be accepted as the right answer. What mattered to him was not simply knowing what a noun meant, but reproducing the teacher's prescribed sentence accurately enough to protect his marks.

I looked back at the television, but I was no longer watching it.

I kept thinking about that little incident.

Here was a child preparing for an examination, sitting with his grandmother, trying earnestly to remember his lessons. There was nothing wrong with his effort. What troubled me was the message he had already absorbed: understanding may not be enough; the answer must match the expected answer.

Perhaps this is how examination anxiety begins—not always through fear of the examination itself, but through the gradual realisation that there is only one acceptable way to know something.

I said nothing more that evening. There was no one there to whom I could explain what was troubling me. So I remained silent, listening to my grandson continue his preparation—one question, one memorised answer, one mark at a time.

The Psychological Cost: Competition, Comparison, and Fear

The conventional grading system does more than measure a child’s cognitive performance; it can profoundly shape the child’s psychological, emotional, and moral relationship with learning and with the self. When achievement is continually expressed through marks, ranks, grades, and classifications, assessment can become not merely a means of understanding learning, but a mechanism through which children learn to judge their own worth.

Jiddu Krishnamurti offered a penetrating critique of conventional examinations and comparative grading. He questioned an educational culture in which children are constantly placed against one another through ranks, classifications, and measures of success. In such a system, comparison breeds fear, and fear constricts the very qualities that education ought to nurture—intelligence, curiosity, confidence, affection, and freedom of thought. When one child is labelled “excellent,” another “average,” and another “weak” or “a failure,” these labels can gradually become identities. Children learn to understand themselves not through their own growth, but through their position in relation to others.

Comparison also creates a persistent psychological conflict. The child who ranks first may learn to identify achievement with superiority and become anxious about losing that position. The child who repeatedly ranks near the bottom may begin to internalise a sense of inadequacy and come to regard failure as an expected part of who they are. Thus, both the apparently successful and the apparently unsuccessful child can become trapped by the same comparative system—one by the fear of falling, the other by the belief that they cannot rise.

In such an environment, the child’s natural and unforced curiosity for knowledge gradually gives way to strategic behaviour. Learning is no longer pursued primarily for the joy of understanding, the satisfaction of solving a problem, or the beauty of discovering something previously unknown. Instead, it becomes a means of securing marks, avoiding failure, gaining approval, or maintaining one’s position in the hierarchy. The question quietly changes from “What can I discover?” to “How well am I doing compared with others?”

This competitive sorting can also reinforce what Carol Dweck describes as a fixed mindset—particularly when marks and labels are interpreted as statements about a child’s inherent ability rather than as information about their present learning. A student who performs poorly in mathematics may not conclude, “I need a different strategy, more practice, or better guidance.” Instead, the conclusion may become, “I am not a mathematics person.” Once such a belief takes root, the student may avoid difficult tasks, protect themselves from further failure, and interpret every setback as confirmation of an assumed intellectual limitation.

Yet the psychological cost is not confined to those who struggle academically. The high-performing child can also become a casualty of the same system. When success is defined by maintaining a perfect score or superior rank, mistakes become threatening rather than instructive. The child may begin to avoid uncertainty, experimentation, and intellectually risky questions because these may lead to failure. The desire to remain successful can become stronger than the desire to explore. Creativity, therefore, is sacrificed not because the child lacks imagination, but because the system has taught the child that mistakes carry a cost.

The deeper problem, then, is not simply the mark itself but what the mark comes to represent. A numerical score may describe performance at a particular moment, but when it becomes a judgement of identity, it can narrow a child’s understanding of their own possibilities. Human development is complex, uneven, relational, and nonlinear; it cannot be adequately represented by a single number.

Education should therefore help children understand assessment as feedback for growth rather than a verdict on worth. When assessment becomes a mirror through which learners can recognise progress, identify difficulties, revise strategies, and set new goals, it strengthens resilience and agency. When it becomes a ranking mechanism, it can cultivate fear, comparison, defensiveness, and dependency on external validation.

The task of education is not to produce children who are constantly asking, “Am I better than the others?” It is to help them ask, “What can I learn, how can I grow, and what can I become?” The difference may appear subtle, but psychologically and educationally, it marks a profound shift from competition to growth, from comparison to self-understanding, and from fear of failure to the courage to learn.

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