Mike's Minute: We should teach that exams aren't everything

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

We are not unique, but we are most definitely different from the way we were.

Once again we are into exam season, and once again we have the flurry of stories of questions that can't be answered, the tears that flow, and the end of the world that is ensuing.

For comfort, the same number of stories are floating about the place currently in Australia.

For context, the last time I did exams these tears and high drama were nowhere to be seen.

So what has happened? Is it possible the way we study has changed?

Is it possible all the mocks that are taken lead you into an area of confusion, whereby unless the real exam looks remarkably similar to the ones you have just practiced on, you freak out?

Is it possible because of the way we teach, it's too rote? In other words, you can parrot back what has been taught but you can't extrapolate out?

Is it also possible that exams and entry to university has become such a big deal that the whole of the future of your life is flashing in front of your eyes, and unless it appears to have gone well you have no future?

Perhaps my advantage was that I wasn’t going to university. I was out into the world to get on with it.

What I needed was University Entrance, preferably endorsed, and that would give me, at the very least, a foot in the door to a job.

Yes, exams seemed hard. Yes, a lot of people were nervous.

Yes, a lot of people after the exam, as we wandered off home, either ran the line that it was a nightmare and they don’t stand a chance, or that it was so easy they couldn’t believe their luck. And we ran those lines no matter what had actually just happened.

We were full of it.

But what we didn’t do was melt down, the media didn’t cover the fallout, and we had no headlines. We were simply kids doing exams and sometimes they went well and sometimes they didn’t.

I wish I knew then what I know now – that school is but a fleeting moment in time that will seem increasingly irrelevant. Although it's your whole world, or at least a decent chunk of it, when you are a kid, ultimately it will all be put into perspective.

Life and its success is rarely, if ever, defined by what you did in year 12 or 13.

Maybe we could teach more of that.

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