26 Mar
National Exams are A-U-D-F-C-K-E-G
This week, six million grade 12 senior high school students have been undergoing the unnecessary yet ritual torture of 'graduation' tests.
Our Kid is at home today, as are most grades 7 and 8 junior high school students. He'll be at home all next week as well because grade 9s have to go through the same robotic hell, using a 2B pencil to fill in little circles which are scanned by computer.
Unnecessary? Of course they are because the only teaching of 'relevance' these students receive in the preceding months is geared to answering the test questions, many of which are, as I've often noted, badly formulated with possible multiple correct answers or none at all.
The following headlines gleaned from the Jakarta Post tell the tale.
Tuesday 23 March
- Despite 'leaks', first day of national exams goes smoothly.
- Leaks, problems mar national final exam
Wednesday 24 March
- National exams still problematic*
Thursday 25 March
- Schools urged to have post-exam cooldown period
(for students suffering stress.)
Friday 26 March
- Students from across the country to take UGM tests.
Yogya's University of Gadjah Mada will hold entrance exams on Sunday, thus demonstrating that the national exams are of no value in determining who goes on to further education.
*The same problems crop up every year. These include misdirected packages of exam papers, sets of answers being sold, answers being sent by text message, teachers changing students' answer sheets, and students unable to take test due to sickness or pregnancy and uncertain whether they can take them at a later date. .
Fellow blogger, Harry Nizam, has suggested that my posts are rarely positive but, hey, here's a positive suggestion for the cooling down period.
Let them play games and Countdown, a popular TV game show which tests vocabulary and maths, can be easily adapted for classroom use.
This is a screengrab from Tuesday's show.
The technical expression for the state of the National Exams is in fact FUBAR.
My eldest daughter finished the Grade 12 national exams on Friday and Saturday morning we flew out to Jogya for her to sit the UGM exams along with thousands of other hopefuls. What a week from hell for her.
Like you, I've long been critical of the national exams as useless exercises in teaching kids how to memorize facts (sometimes incorrect "facts"); how to use cell phones to cheat on the exams (often with the cooperation of the teachers proctoring the exams); and how to generate large amounts of stomach acid due to the stress before the exams, during the exams and after the exams waiting for the results.
As a teacher here at international schools, I never actually had a part in the exams until I finished up my teaching career at a national plus school. Looking at the plan for the second semester this year with my Indonesian teaching partner, I noticed that he had blocked out 5 of 6.5 teaching hours per day for exam practice with the rest of the time spent doing fun things like art, PE or music so as not to interfere with the real purpose of the third term – drill to kill. When I launched into one of my anti-exam rants, my partner told me that as a foreigner I just didn't understand Indonesian students who are lazy and not motivated to learn anything unless forced to by taking the national exams. So, where does educational reform go when one of the better teachers that I've worked with has this attitude?
That being said, the United States is well into making high stakes exams even more onerous than usual by putting teachers jobs on the line for schools that do poorly on standardized exams. Is there any sanity left in educational systems anywhere in the world? I think I retired at just the right time, unfortunately my kiddies are going to have to deal with this for a long time.
It's got that way in the UK too, Bruce.
So why on earth does Indonesia want to "internationlise" it's schools, eh?
The "label" sells!
Hence the post following this one, V.
I don't want to bore folk with educational jargon in my posts, so I didn't include the following which I've lifted from a teacher-training manual I've been commissioned to put together.
………………………………………………………………….
The theory of multiple intelligences was developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University.
Because the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing and short-answer tests, is far too limited, he proposed eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:
1. Linguistic intelligence (‘word smart’):
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence (‘number/reasoning smart’)
3. Spatial intelligence (‘picture smart’)
4. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (‘body smart’)
5. Musical intelligence (‘music smart’)
6. Interpersonal intelligence (‘people smart’)
7. Intrapersonal intelligence (‘self smart’)
8. Naturalist intelligence (‘nature smart’)
He later proposed a ninth intelligence, Existential (‘reality smart’), which is the ability and tendency to pose and ponder questions about life, death, and ultimate realities. This is generally first manifested among teenagers in their search for identity.
Each person has a unique combination, or profile. We each have all intelligences but no two individuals have them in the same exact configuration – similar to our fingerprints.
Dr. Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, he says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live.
Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labeled ‘learning disabled’ or simply ‘under-achievers’ – “has ability, could do better” – when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-mathematical classroom.
[...] was reading a post the other day on the Jakartass website about national exams (one of my favorite topics to rant about) and I followed a link to read an article about [...]