For most children, exams are their worst nightmare! The empty, sick feeling in the stomach as they enter the exam room; the mental block that rises up as the papers are handed out; the shaking hand as the answers are written out; the desperate feeling of loneliness as the realisation dawns that no one is going to come to their aid – it all conjures up a terrible feeling and foreboding. Why would anyone impose such a regime on an innocent child? Why would anyone be so mean as to present these lovely young children with such a demanding, demeaning, cruel, horrible and unfair experience when we should be building them up, we should be helping them?
Educators will, of course, argue that there are many valuable reasons for having children write examinations. It is an ideal opportunity to find out what the children know and, conversely but equally important, do not know, as a result of which the teachers can ascertain what still needs to be learned and understood. It is also an excellent time to see how the children handle pressure (of the unknown and of time) and how they manage to work on their own.
Others might retort that we should help ease the pain and misery of the youngsters, not so much by sparing them from exams completely but by helping them in their exams. Why do we not allow teachers to sit in the exam room with the children and tell them what to write? Or what about having a break halfway through the exam and let the teacher tell them what they are doing wrong, so that they can correct their mistakes in the second part? After all, the argument may go, it is the teacher’s reputation, and indeed consequently the school’s reputation, that is at stake and therefore they should do everything to make sure the children come out on top.
The very idea suggested above is preposterous! Of course, we should not give them the answers during the exam – what sort of exam would that be? Of course we should not have a break and tell them where they are going wrong – how is that assessing them? The examination is an examination of the children (and, indeed, of their teacher’s teaching); it is an extremely valuable means of assessing what has been learned and what still has to be learned.
If we are agreed on that, then we will discover that what is happening during many school sporting fixtures is profoundly preposterous and ludicrous. As exams are a means of finding out what children have learned in the classroom, so school sports fixtures are examinations, tests to determine how much youngsters have learned from training sessions during the week. They provide wonderful feedback on what the children still need to learn and develop; they show how much the children can handle the pressure. Exams are competitive, with work being marked; similarly sporting fixtures are competitive, with performance being assessed. The children are to do them on their own.
In that light, therefore, we need to realise that coaches standing on the side line shouting out to the youngsters what they must do is totally contrary to the purpose of the event – it is like the teacher writing the exam for the children, or giving them the answers. We certainly do not allow such behaviour in our exam rooms and we certainly should not be allowing it on our sports fields. We must understand that coaches coming on at half-time and telling the children what they are doing wrong is also totally contrary to the purpose and spirit of an examination – it is like the teacher telling the children halfway through the exam where they are going wrong and how they must correct it. Once again, we certainly do not (and must not) allow such behaviour in our exam rooms and we must do everything we can to ensure it does not happen in a sports fixture.
Coaches must not try to argue that as their reputation, or even the school’s reputation, is at stake they must do all they can to tell the children what to do – that does not work for the teachers, whose reputation is also at stake, and it will not work for coaches. The teacher’s reputation is based on how well the children grasp the subject; if they show they do not understand it in the exam, the teacher will need to go over it again in lessons. The same principle will apply to the sports coaches. Fixtures are, quite simply, examinations, rightly so, and must be treated as such, but if we continue to give the answers we are utterly irresponsible and cheating. That is an even worse nightmare.
