Exams

I was supervising some year twelve exams the other day. They're final year of high school exams that help to rank the kids across the state for university entrance etc. They don't examine anything we've actually taught, just generalised thinking ability.

Here's a sample:

"Philosophy is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat that doesn't exist"

This statement is closest to ...

And four similar sentences follow from which you have to choose one. Unfortunately "pretentious wank" wasn't one of the options; it certainly would have been the most accurate.

Don't stress - I'm not giving away important pedagogical secrets - it was only a practice exam.

As I wandered around, manning the watchtowers to make sure that the inmates remained in solitary confinement for the full two hours of torture, I was brought to wonder about the nature of our species; can you imagine other animals doing this?

I had visions of adult wildebeest, patrolling in grim silence while their progeny spent two hours on their backs, putting their legs through routines performed by synchronised swimming teams at the last Olympics; nothing they'd ever use in migrating across the savannah or clambering up crocodile infested riverbanks but related to it in some tangential way.

Or branches manned by solemn kookaburras, gazing down their beaks in stern majesty while their little ones analysed the puns in Shakespeare or described the humour in an episode of the Goon Show. You might get to a laugh eventually but it would take a while.

In all fairness, there is competition in the animal kingdom for precedence - a position in the pecking order - but the rewards for victory are usually mating rights. There isn't a school board anywhere in the world offering that kind of pay-off for topping their exams, although the students might be more inclined to study if we did. Were we, in fact, to offer your choice of washboard stomached triathlete or buxom beauty, according to personal preference, I think our streets would be denuded of juvenile delinquents because they'd all be neck deep in differential calculus homework.

But talking about sex and school students is way too icky. A good bit more than half the year 12 students in Australia have certainly had sexual experiences of some kind but the powers that be can't have anything to do with it officially; official sanction it might encourage them to be more enthusiastic about it than they already are. As if that was biologically possible!

So what do we offer? We offer the possibility that, if you complete this torture session and many others like it, you might get entry into a university, at which you can work for another 3 - 8 years subjecting yourself to further pain and at the end of which you'll have a degree that might, if the jobs still exist and haven't been sent to India, get you employment and a career which could, if you work even harder and luck is on your side, get you enough money to pay off the debt you incurred paying your torturers. Then you might be able to get married, have some mating rights for a few short years, buy a house and then spend the rest of your useful life raising and paying for the next generation of inmates.

I wonder why they put themselves through it, to be honest.

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Notes

Kookaburras are an Australian bird species in the kingfisher family. Instead of calling or singing, they laugh. It's probably why Australians don't take themselves too seriously; there's always someone up a tree ready to laugh at you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qix6oUxim3Q

The Goon Show was a radio comedy show from years ago. Absolutely brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVrgmwWHqo8