Examination - one of the ways of passing on from a class to a higher class. Examination is seen as a way of testing if a particular student is ready for the next stage of his education - so he is tested at the end of every stage before the next stage. Examination seems so scary to many persons while to persons like me it is just a normal phase. Read. Go for the exam. Write what you know to the best of your ability.

When examination results are out: some pass with flying colours; some pass moderately; and some fail. Now, because somebody failed does not mean that that person is less intelligent than the ones who passed. I will state why? Examination is such that if you read and you go for it, luckily if what you read comes out, you will sail through. Conversely, if you did not read and you go for an exam, there is a strong likelihood that you are going to fail. So passing an examination boils down to who has knowledge of the questions set. Though some persons do not read, instead they go to write an exam on reliance in their traditional memory. This is good but cannot guarantee you a well pass.

As reasoned above, passing an examination is mostly based on who read; understanding what was read also plays a role. To settle down and read takes discipline; many people find reading boring; why some find it interesting. We could say that those who read most times are the ones who have the discipline to sit one place and read a book while those who do not have discipline will unlikely sit down and read a book. We could then say that passing an examination takes discipline, and likely the determined and disciplined ones can pass. Hence, examination is more of a test of one's "determination and discipline" level and not intelligence.

Though intelligence borders on the amount of knowledge one has; though not all the time since a single person cannot have all the knowledge - which makes intelligence particularised to a certain field. A person could be more intelligent when it comes to driving a car and less intelligent when it comes to driving a bicycle. Intelligence I say, is more of the application of knowledge to new sceneries in life for the solving of problems or the application of knowledge to get a favourable outcome.

Likely, the more knowledge a person has, the more intelligent he will tend to be; though some people can have fewer knowledge of a particular topic and yet exert a big amount of intelligence.

So for examination, a person who is disciplined will sit and read for an exam, and that person will acquire knowledge, and when he sits for the exam and what he reads comes out, so he will pass the exam.

A person who failed most likely did not read. Which could be a pointer that he lacks discipline. But sometimes, it is not just the discipline or the knowledge; factors beyond our control also account for failures in exam. That is why somebody could read well and yet still fail an exam. It might be that towards an exam writing the person fell sick and so he could not perform well; it might be that the person was having a certain problem: family problem(s), cult-related problem(s); community problem(s); boyfriend or girlfriend problem(s). These factors, depending on how tough, could make a person fail an exam. A person could even read well and go for an exam and at the end fail because of his handwriting.

Further, the fact that an exam script could be given to three distinct lecturers and they will mark them in distinct ways, giving distinct scores, tells us that exam is what the lecturers feel about what you have written.
So never use exam as an objective test of your intelligence/knowledge. It is simply just a system that tries as much as possible to be fair in testing the knowledge of candidates; but it is not quite fair. We have heard news that some lecturers score scripts based on their particular mood: if they are happy they pass students more, and if they are sad they fail students more.

With all these factors, could we still say that examination is a test of one's intelligence, knowledge or even discipline? Though it is more of a test of one's discipline!

- PaulPipAr

http://paulpipar.cf/articles/exam_false.php

branhampaul Reno Omokri said similar thing few days ago

The most a annoying thing is that some unreasonable lecturers assume that having a good handwriting means the student is intelligent, hence some dumb girls would use fine handwriting to copy a guy's work in an exam and end up scoring higher than the guy.