saturday i participated at the local biology contest, aiming for a top position in order to enter the national competition. however, it was nothing but another opportunity to convince myself of how little our education ministers or, better yet, system cares about students. to my way of thinking, the attitude authorities should have regarding us is something like <wow, so not all students are completely uninterested. what can we do to make them better, and to make more like them???> . and i’m not talking about us only, the biology competitors. i’m talking about all the students who give more than a crap about a certain subject, but are jerked around by this system.
but first things first. being summoned at half past eight at the venue of the exam, i arrived 15 minutes earlier, according to the education i have received about punctuality. what shocked me, and i still don’t know why, is that i found out there that we are allowed to enter the school only between 9 and 9.30….the reason for calling us almost an hour early? so that even those who are late can actually arrive on time. ok…so lesson number one: don’t try to do things right, since everyone around would make you wait for those who don’t care. to put it this way, the loser is that who comes on time. fair enough.
we eventually got into the exam classes. the teachers wouldn’t let us open any window, based on the fact that the door was already opened. needless to say, the door brought no sort of fresh air so we were all sweaty and nervous, and had to take repeatedly pauses. but, for what i was going to see for myself, this had just been the fun part. as i finished my paper, i went to the evaluators. i have to mention, the test was a simple choice type, so we were supposed to put the correct answers into a certain chart. the teachers than had a see through template, which was laid over our answer sheet. my surprise was of enormous proportions when i could only count ten correct choices, out of 70. even though i knew that couldn’t possibly be right, the evaluators had nothing but compassion to offer me, and a list of the correct answers. at a not too close look, i was able to spot that the template did not match that list. my exam was re-evaluated, the mark was way better.
i went home thinking that what had just happened was outrageous, but there was more! i found out from friends that the exact same thing had happened at 12th grade (i’m 11th). my first guess was that they had mixed up the two templates. but it seemed that their subjects had even more problems. the list of correct answers was, in fact, wrong. after changing some of it, though there were still students with good reasons for changing more, the answer was <we have already changed for you a quarter of these answers. what do you want? half? what you have by now it’s more than enough>.
so thank you, great system of teachers and education ministers and inspectors. thank you for not giving a damn about students who work themselves out, hoping to get to nationals. the subjects were the same all over the country – the lists of answers were different. even after announcing that the templates were wrong, there were cities who couldn’t care less, and continued to grade according to those wrong sheets.
why aren’t students interested in school anymore? it’s our generation’s fault too, i don’t argue here. but how are we supposed to enjoy school, when there are no teachers left to enjoy it with us?
the whole idea we get from them is..<so…you still learn heh? it can’t turn out good for you>