The educational system has gone mad.
For as long as anyone can remember, the Grade 12 Provincial Exams have been the measure of competence of the material learned by young people while attending high school.
Today, students need only take one Provincial Exam. All of the rest of the tests are voluntary!
Yes! Voluntary!!
Now, why would anyone take a test voluntarily? Given choices, of having the grade that you earned in class - or potentially losing up to 40% of your letter grade..........hmmmmmmmmm. Why would a sane student sacrifice their sanity? I wouldn't take it. Why should our students? Martyrs maybe?
UBC, SFU and UT (to name a few) don't need Provincial scores to determine academic ability. Some institutions have their own standardized tests such as the LPI (Language Proficiency Test). Others have writing assessments that are taken upon acceptance into an academic program.
The Toefl is the test of choice of international students. Children as young as six years old begin preparing for the Toefl test in countries such as Korea, Hong Kong and Japan. The vocabulary of these tests is equal to that of a first or second year university student. The test is mandatory for students who have not lived in an English speaking country for five years or more. Most of the words are barely used outside of academic situations. These students have diction issues, syntax problems are stressed and find English difficult to learn and yet thousands of these hard working pupils take these tests so that they can be educated in places like Canada.
Here, students don't have to study terribly hard. They don't have to know the meaning of words such as: succinct or trepidation or vernacular. And well, they don't really get rewarded for taking tests - unless a student wishes to earn a Provincial Scholarship of up to $1000 and then they must take the exams. Frankly, a summer job will earn them that whopping dollar value. Aside of the money, it is unclear why anyone would consider putting themselves through the incredible stress of each test. They are complex. They are hard. They have hardly any pictures and nothing jumps off of the pages to attract a students lasting attention. So, they don't wanna do it. And our parents (the government) is okie do-key with that decision!
The only mandatory grade 12 test left is the English !2 Provincial Exam.
It is proposed that by the end of 2008 all Provincial English Exams will be administered by computer only. Paper based tests will be phased out, and from a purely environmental point of view - many trees will be saved! At one school in Coquitlam, over a thousand paper based tests are administered to the English 12 class alone, and the cost savings will be fantastic to boot.
Students will finally learn that typing is the only mode of communication, and hand writing will become entirely obsolete. We are becoming more environmentally friendly! Or are we simply losing centuries of scribes? When I ask my son what would happen if the power to his computer were to go out and if the computer were to purely crash and lose everything it holds, would he be okay? He merely says ...."so?.......that won't happen" or " we'll get a solar computer". I don't know how to take it.
But I guess, that since I specialize in the Grade 12 English Provincial Exam, I am not really affected. High school students will still need to learn how to say things properly, or learn when to use imagery, metaphors or other literary devices to make their points. They will need the knowledge of Shakespeare, and Walt Whitman. They can use these skills in their everyday lives for certain! I have jealous little test takers!
Why don't we keep the tests for Math and Science? Why don't we teach budgeting, and survival skills? Why don't we get rid of Shakespeare and get on with usable skills! Half of me is sarcastic, and the other half is disgusted at our slash and burn practices. The rain forest of knowledge is depleted ever more rapidly.
I simply don't understand why kids go to school at all anymore. They don't have too. Some elementary students spend two days at school and three days online. I am not sure how accurate the grades are in classroom environments compared to those online. Things are not adding up. Cyb er classes are everywhere. How do we monitor accuracy and performance when it is so easy to cut and paste everything off of the Internet?
It seems that if I like a kid more than I like another kid - why shouldn't I give him an "A" because he tries harder - even if he doesn't have a clue what the material is all about in Biology or Physics or any other class for that matter. The cracks in the system have become chasms. But hey, big deal. No one will check anymore to see what what our kids are doing! What they know or what they don't know. And...I can fail the kid I don't like! Even in early one room school houses, the superintendent would oversee the marking practices of the teachers. Standardized tests go as far back into history as 'readin' 'ritin' an 'rithmetic'.
There are so many things I can't do in a classroom anymore. Ridiculous.
I am embarrassed that we as educators can let this happen. The tests make sense - they show for the most part, the abilities of our students. Some students may have experienced test anxiety certainly, but overall the structure forced students to apply themselves and prepare for their own futures. Today, kids just need to be nice to the teachers and perhaps do a little homework. Some kids don't even do that. They are simply expectant youths and when they don't get the marks they think they should get, they react in inappropriate ways and raise a stink at home or in the school districts.
Kids don't feel the need to be responsible, the Province doesn't feel the need for follow up, and the teachers have become robots passing out grades based on tasks completed (done well or not does not count). Kids have no real need to perform anymore because academic performance is not show as a priority. I am truly sad. Sad for the students, sad for the Province and sad for the profession as a whole. Our educational system is supposed to help young people grow into contributing members of society. Instead, it is a political volley between the government and the teachers federation. Since we don't ask students to do anything to prove their ability - how can they show us that they are capable of carrying us forth into the future? We adults are making some bad decisions and our youth are the ones that will have to clean it up and will be ill prepared to so.
For almost 20 years, I have worked with students who are preparing for the English Provincial Exams in British Columbia. I invite you to visit my website and if I can be of help to your kids, give me a call. There are numerous links to help you find answers to the Provincial Exam content. Feel free to check them out at www.rightchoiceed.com.
Be well,
Cathy Holmes
Professional ESL/ English tutor for over 15 years. In the field of education for over 20 years working with international students from around the globe.
