For years the school system has taught us that exams and homework are a vital part of

our education disregarding other methods to test our learning capacity. These two
things have only proved to be nothing but a nuisance to students who should
supposedly be enjoying their academic process. Exams on one hand just create
unnecessary stress towards students and will mostly just test your memory. On the
other hand homework, while being effective can take away valuable time that students
could use for other tasks. Those were only a few of the problems I have with the ways
school carries out its job and yes ladies and gentlemen, this moment will be dedicated
to transmit to you in full length said issues.

Exams supposedly serve as a way to evaluate how much content we were able to
understand throughout a certain period of time, however this is far from the truth as
they dont take into consideration other factors present at the moment of evaluation. At
the end of the day it is very likely that a small percentage of the class properly studied
for that event. Me, being a student like anyone else, have seen and experienced many
of the ways people carry out this process. Some cheat, some simply memorize the
content to forget it later and others just fail. In the end, the goal to demonstrate how
much they know is never achieved, at least with a majority of the class.

It all comes down to the grades. Tests are graded and make up for a significant amount
of your total score in a subject, so obviously students will do everything they can to
pass it. This also creates unnecessary stress on students given that the fear of their
GPA going down haunts them. Fact is, humans will always want an easy way out so in
order to pass without having to go through the annoying process of studying, they will
resort to cheating or other methods that ultimately defeat the purpose of tests. Look at
it this way, if you could get your dream body only by consuming supplements or by
having to go to the gym for years without being able to eat like you want, which one
would you choose? I'll let you think about that one, and be realistic.

Homework is another problem that’s on the table. An argument that is often used to
defend it is that you need to practice in order to get better at a subject. I respectfully
disagree as I believe school should make sure that students are learning what is being
taught during the 8 hours they are on campus. Homework is simply another
mechanism that causes stress to learners as some of them can be really long and really
hard, not only that but guess what, these are also evaluated. People need to remember
that we have our own lives outside of school and we have other things to do other than
write a 3 page analysis on Shakespeare. Some of us like to exercise, some of us have a
part-time job, heck some of us even like to read and homework only makes it harder
for us to do so. Then again, as we like to find an easy way out we simply copy it from a
classmate the next day before the time of turning it in and voila, we just saved
ourselves time, were able to complete our side activities and got a perfect score on our
work, talk about a home-run.

Now before you think that i'm just someone who is pointing out problems without
presenting solutions let me tell you that i'm about to prove you wrong. There are many
solutions to the issue and I'm gonna highlight some of the ones I think are best for
everyone. Exams should totally be replaced by projects. I think that projects are a
better way to have students do research about a topic since they genuinely have to
learn what they are gonna do before they do it. They also serve as a mechanism to
improve a learner’s creativity and express their ideas through a work that feels more
like its their own. We are already familiarized with projects given that because of the
pandemic final exams were replaced with them and according to students they learned
new things. So, if a last minute decision to change exams to projects worked, imagine
what an actual well-developed plan to carry this out would do.

Homeworks on another note, while i would not say that they should totally be
eliminated, i do think they should be drastically reduced. For example, subjects like
math and physics require more thinking so they could maybe give us a weekly
worksheet just to refresh the contents given in class. And for other subjects such as
language arts or social studies, reading and then discussing in class should do the
trick. It’s all reduced to balance. Teachers should know how to split the workload and
not make us do insane amounts of work at home when we have class time to do them.

At the end of the day, most of us don't like to work at all. Trust me, I know that because
I am also one of you. However, we know that it is unrealistic for teachers to just not
give any work because if that were to happen then we would truly hinder our learning
process. What we can do is find ways to make learning more fun or at least more
bearable while at the same time having alternatives that will better help us in the
long-run. I hope that everyone got something out of my speech and that next time you
find yourself in a situation in which school is messing with your personal life, you are
not afraid to speak up because like a wise person once said, “it is more powerful to
speak up than to silently resent”.