THIS refers to the editorial ‘Cheating in exams’ (Aug 14) and the letter ‘Cheating in exams will take us nowhere’ (Aug 22), which highlighted the fact that our prevailing education system needs a thorough revamp. Presently, the way adopted to educate students is, in general, a sequence of three procedures: transfer of knowledge to a teacher, from a teacher to a student, and from a student to the answer sheet.

In many cases, examination papers are merely set to check the ability of memorisation of the students. Then we try to judge the ability of students via aptitude test for admission in professional and other institutions of higher education. This indicates that we are not satisfied with our own examination system. It is interesting that cheating cases are rarely reported during aptitude tests. As a matter of fact, judging the aptitude via multiple choice questions (MCQs) is not at all justified.

We first need to train the teachers about how to teach the students to analyse a particular scenario. The syllabi may be revised thoroughly to make it compatible with the existing global standards. The realistic approach is to adopt the ways in which knowledge is delivered and not just pasted on the brains.

Trainings are also essential for teachers to enable them to understand the significance of analytical skills. It will then be easier to assess if a particular question in the examination paper is answered via cheating or not.

One senior academician told me that once during an examination at the Cornel University in the United States, his teacher gave three theoretical problems which he was unable to solve in a week’s time. His teacher allocated him good grade and later told him that the grade was given for the attempt and the approach adopted.

Out of those three problems, two were subsequently solved, and, for one of them, a person got the European Scientist of the Year award, while for the other, there was the Noble Prize in Physics. The questions were solved by people other than my teacher and the teacher of my teacher!

Dr Intikhab Ulfat
Karachi

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2021