Martin Luther King Jr said 'Intelligence and character is the goal of true education', but does his saying stand true considering how our education system works? Throughout our school and college life, we've been told that marks are everything.?
'How are you going to get into a good institute if you don't have the marks?', a nagging question that's indiscriminately thrown at students everywhere!
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Is this what education is for, to senselessly compete for a good score?.?
To drive home this point about how marks aren't a benchmark,?IAS officer Nitin Sangwan, took to Twitter to share his old Class 12 CBSE mark sheet from 2002.?
He had scored 24 in Chemistry - just one point above the passing marks.?
Mr Sangwan shared his average or poor grades to send out the message that marks alone do not determine the course of life or what you can achieve.?
Taking to social media, the Deputy Municipal Commissioner of Amdavad Municipal Corporation and the CEO of Smart City, Ahmedabad said, "In my 12th exams, I got 24 marks in Chemistry - just 1 mark above passing marks. But that didn't decide what I wanted from my life."
He further said, "Don't bog down kids with the burden of marks. Life is much more than board results. Let results be an opportunity for introspection & not for criticism."
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Yes, having a good score in school or college does open a lot of doors, perhaps that's how the world works. But mere numbers are not the ultimate measure of someone's intellect or talent.?
Last year, another IAS officer put up a post about marks not being a deciding factor in life, after a student died by suicide.
'Today I read a shocking [piece of] news in [a] newspaper that one student committed suicide because of unexpected result in the exam,' he wrote. 'I appeal to all students and their parents not to take the result very seriously! It¡¯s just a number game. You will get many more chances to prove your caliber', Chhattisgarh IAS officer, Ashwin Saran, wrote on Facebook.??
It is important to study hard and do your best as far as studies are concerned. However, to think of your scorecard as the sole judge of your capabilities is not prudent. Even if you have not scored as well as you would have wanted to, it is not the end of the world; it does not mean that you will be unsuccessful, and IAS officer Nitin Sangwan's scorecard is proof of that.