plz rate my essay...

Hello, I'm having a bit of trouble knowing where my essay stands. plz help me. I'm 15 and I'm from Mauritius, Africa. I'm doing my GCSE, and I'm not a native english speaker. the essay has an emotional value for me because we stress a lot on education here. Getting six units (6 As) and the 3As at A levels is an obsession my friends have, and I don't like this horrific competition, I feel suffocated.

Title : Do you think examinations should be abolished because they only encourage rote-learning ?

Ask any child: 'exams are cool, aren't they...? – and have a nice look at the scorn he gives you. I think this pretty well illustrates what 'exams' really are...



GCSEs, A-levels: thinking of them makes me dizzy...Perhaps all this is because of the six-units-and-three-As frenzy that is gripping the nation...No: intelligent people – which unfortunately exclude my teachers and parents – know that pressure does little to help children. Rather, it opens up some rather scary avenues: suicide, for example. Last year, a dozen or more twelve-year-old Japanese kids killed themselves – another classic example of a stressful education system's incredible sidestrokes. But, England with its Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 is quite at bay, continuous assessment seems to be better.



Pretending that there is no stress does not solve the problem. What we need is a three hundred and sixty degrees change in peoples’ mindsets. Some people actually advise you ‘Don’t watch TV, there’s nothing more important than GCSEs, once you’re through, you can watch TV your whole life...' The funniest thing is that they actually do not realize that the song they sing is off-key.



'Rote-learning is weird; everybody agrees. Is there any point in copying computers? They are better than us anyway. No one will admit it - but there is a real mania of learning the book by heart here. I know people who literally can quote paragraphs verbatim. Having a razor-sharp memory does not always give you brilliant results, but sadly, this is news to stupid people.



Abolishing exams would be welcoming doomsday with open arms. If not, how else to find somebody's true ability? Nobody has, after all, come up with a better idea. It is the only way of finding the right people for the right jobs, especially in government agencies. The Foreign Office, for example, exclusively relies on its very own examinations and interviews for choosing its personnel. Incidentally, it does not accept bribes…



Examinations encourage vicious competition for an elitist society, which excludes ordinary people. We need to find a solution for all people. What everyone can do – for the time being – is to zip their lips before giving wrong advice.