My daughter sat her very first real exam at school today. A momentous occasion, tackled like a professional with a major reward being that when the exam was over she was free to leave for the day. More exams tomorrow and the next day and then, on Friday, her grade will have their bikes carted off to part of the Galloping Goose Trail, a 55 km multiple-use trail, where they themselves will arrive on a school bus. They will cycle about 10 km to a lake where they can swim, picnic and jape around until it is time to cycle back to the bus.
A good way of letting off steam after a grueling week for them all.
Now she will take exams every year until she goes to college -- when she still will get little relief. But she is luckier than I was. My first exams were at age eleven when it was decided what sort of secondary education you were best suited for. She is also lucky that until she does her Provincial exams these only count for 10% of the year's grading, with the balance coming from coursework. For me, 100% of the year was graded by end-of-year exams. (And I, of course, had to walk five miles to school in the snow without shoes…)
It is not uncommon these days to hear that schoolchildren are being taught-to-the-Test rather than according to a syllabus; and, certainly, that very much seems to be so with the US "No Child Left Behind" program, in which testing is even 100% computerized. Rather like the knowledge test at your local DMV, and we all know how low a bar that represents.
But my daughter's exams are really written, on paper, and they are marked by humans, avoiding the digital cliff of there/not there that an automatic system suffers from: human interpretation is a great thing.
Her having gained a perfect 100% in the advanced placement mathematics course materials makes the exam tomorrow rather low in pressure, although my expectations are rather higher -- as are hers.
