Everyone loves exams, students get to study for and take
them, teachers get to decipher answers and grade them then calculate final
grades, parents get to encourage their kids to study for them. Who am I
kidding, no one likes exams except for when their finished. Here in Namibia,
final exams are a whole month long, delicately scheduling one exam a day
(multiple exams for each subject) leaving study hall for the remaining hours of
school time. It is a super unnecessarily long drawn out process that could be combined
into a week like they have it in the States. But no system is perfect so there
has to be some reason they feel this is best.
The month
begins with the sanding of desks. The desks here have wooden tops and become
every kids personal art easel through the course of the year. Every kid must pick a desk, bring sand paper from
home and go to town outside. I’m going to be frank with you, this process was
torture. Even the good students who you know would never make a mark on the
desk were expected to go out in the hot African sun and sand away small
drawings of shapes and flowers because it might be an answer they could cheat
off of. Those kids who could either not afford sand paper or forgot it (I’m
thinking it was most likely the latter) took to picking up rocks off the ground
or flipping their desks upside down sitting on it and having a friend or two
push it across the concrete, I thought that was pretty innovative. I was lucky
enough to supervise this event and thus I was in charge of approving whether
the desk was up to standards or not.
After a while when about half of the kids were done I began going around
trying to speed up the process. I was wondering what took some kids much longer
than others. It was the deeply carved straight lines, triangles, and flowers
that obviously hid answers to history, Afrikaans, and the like. I told them it
looked fine but they were so worried the principal would beat them if it wasn’t
completely cleaned. This slightly infuriated me so I grabbed the sand paper and
began sanding myself. I felt that if I could not get these marks out myself
then the poor kid shouldn’t be expected to either. After struggling with many
desks I told them it was fine and to get out of the sun. Some of them were
still worried they would get hit but were so grateful to me for understanding
they shouldn’t be punished for someone else’s mistakes (or in this case deeply
grooved lines that was a result of boredom). I told them I would speak with the
principal regarding their matter. When all the desks were put back I marched up
to the principal and told him that some of the desks still had marks on them,
on those ones I grabbed the sand paper myself and failed to get them out
therefore if he felt they were not up to standards here was a piece of sandpaper,
he could try for himself and if he got it out he could hit me instead of the
poor kids. I think he thought I was joking, I was not. I don’t think he ever
checked any of the desks.
When the
actual exams began the schedule was something like 2.5 hours of silent study
followed by a half hour break and then about another hour or so of silent study
before the exam began. Sometimes the first half of the day also had an exam
during, which would make 2 2hour exams that day. This part was slightly torturous
too as the students were not allowed to work together, make noise, or sleep.
Although I was naturally smart through junior high and high school I did study
but I always found that the two most important study aids was a restful mind
and a friend to study with and ask questions to. Sitting there with a book in
front of you for two hours 3 times a day (there is mandatory afternoon and
evening study which is silent study hour) I think is a waste of time.
Unfortunately for these kids, they know no other way of studying and the
ministry specifically demands they do this. Why? They feel it will improve low
test scores, I have other opinions on that though. During the exam the
invigilator must actively be walking around inspecting and keeping a watchful
eye on everyone. I told him I worked security for 4 years and have a better
watchful eye when I am stationary. This was also another Ministry delegated
rule.
Once the
exams are done, the teachers go into full marking mode. My school as is many
other schools are in clusters, much like a district. Collectively they have a
vision and a mission and during exam time they share exams. This is intended to
lighten the teachers load of each writing their own exams and to ensure that
all the students in the cluster learn the whole nationally delegated syllabus.
It’s a really good idea except that the exams this year for this specific
cluster were not looked over by someone else. One exam was missing a whole
page, other exams had too advanced questions for the specific grade, and on a
few of them even the answer key was incorrect. One of the exams I helped a
fellow colleague check I realized every kid got the exact same questions wrong.
From my experiences, when that happens the teachers I had threw out the
question acknowledging the questions was poorly written or it was the teacher’s
fault for not adequately teaching it for his/her students to learn. In Namibia
though, a common excuse is that the student did not study, that it’s their
fault. Maybe it is because I was just a student a mere six months ago or
because I always tend to give people the benefit of the doubt but I tend to
take the students’ side on many issues that have arisen since I have been here,
my principal has even called me out for it and has told me I need to be harsher
on them. This was not in a mean way, he said it teasingly and with a smile but
I think there was some seriousness to it. Anyway for this specific exam,
realizing nearly every kid failed the multiple choice portion, I decided to go
through every single question and calculate how many kids actually got each
question correct. What I found out was that practically every kid got the same
questions wrong and had put the same wrong answer. I knew the subject teacher
was in fact a very good teacher so it couldn’t have been his fault nor the
students, unless all 20 of them copied the wrong answers off of one kid, which
was also unlikely since I was walking around the tiny class for the full 2
hours. So I made the teacher take the exam – mostly because I didn’t know
enough about African or Namibian history to vouch for the correct answers. As
it turned out, the teacher himself failed the exam when I marked it according
to the answer key. After the whole debacle and realization, I was able to then
to go back and award almost every kid an extra nearly 20% for their correct
answers. That was certainly the difference between failing and passing for
many.
The subject
teacher was just as grateful as I was to figure this discrepancy out, what is
heart breaking is to think how many kids took this same exam and how many of
their teachers might not have caught this, nor taken the time to fix all the
exams. This education system is far from perfect, but so is the one in the
United States. While I am sure that I will definitely learn more about this
system as time goes on, it breaks my heart to think that maybe one of the
reasons for the high fail rate here is due unavoidable mistakes this this. Its
seems like these kids have the cards stacked against them so often, its not
surprising that help is needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment