Amira Kashgary Okaz I was drawn to what has been the hype in social media lately. Most posts have been about the funny answers given by elementary and high school students in their exams in a variety of subjects. Despite the fact that the answers are truly hilarious and entertaining, they reveal a devastating truth about our educational system. The students had strong and alarming reasons behind their answers. This should draw our attention to two main problems of our educational system. The first, which is, in my opinion, the less serious, is the misconduct and lack of knowledge of the students. The second problem, which is much more critical, is the incompetence of teachers in exam writing and question formatting. That is proven by the answers given by the students. Regardless of how unusual they are, they are not incorrect answers. The student simply “used his brain” and gave answers from his own reality. If the answers were silly, they were only as silly as the questions. Let's examine some of the questions before we misjudge the student. This is a question from a Computer Science exam paper: “Mention two job positions for non-CS-specialists?” The student's answer: “1. Trade in the sheep business. 2. Become a truck driver” Regardless of the inarticulate way the question is written, it only measures the ability to recall information. According to Bloom's taxonomy of information, remembering information is the lowest level in his information pyramid. We must ask ourselves: what is the learning value behind this question? What does it have to do with CS? What is the best possible and the worst possible answer? Is CS anything more than the practical study of dealing with computers? Is there more than one correct answer? Is there a correct and incorrect answer to the question? Failure to consider these questions is what led the student to give such a ridiculous and “incorrect” answer. Another question in the subject Arabic was: “How did the poet picture the verse mentioned above?” The student's answer: “With a Galaxy S4 camera lens.” We can see the student's keen eye and his knowledge of electronics, which prevails over the keenness of the teacher in his exam writing skills. I have never heard of a poet “picturing a verse”. The teacher might have meant for the student to talk about the metaphors and allegories in the verse. Another question prompting the student to use the lowest level of information in his history paper was: “What was Salah Al-Din's stand on the Crusaders after the Battle of Hattin?” The student's answer: “He was happy!” Unfortunately, most of the questions are in the format of “mention the following” or “how many of such and such,” which does not challenge the critical faculty of the students. To add fuel to fire is this question: “Mention three of the conditions for marriage in Islam?” The student's answer: “The dowry, the couple's consent, and darbuka drummers” Question: “The body of a grasshopper consists of three sections, mention their names.” The student's answer: “We never studied this!” Question: “What are the conditions of fornication (Zina)?” Answer: “Four witnesses and the beeping sirens of Haia cars” Question: “Mention three types of algae.” Answer: “Emad Al-Hossni, Victor Simoes, and Kamil Al-Mousa” Exam questions are supposed to measure the skills and abilities of the students in relaying information and using their critical faculty. Such skills in exam writing are considered the basics the teacher acquires in order to become one. The questions I have shown to you only measure basic skills such as remembering and comprehension and completely ignore the more critical skills such as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It does not even measure the critical and creative thinking of the student, putting all of the qualities of a good exam paper such as clarity, authenticity, and practicality aside. The devastating side of all of this is the fact that the teachers blame the students for their incompetence in exam writing and call their answers “irrelevant”, subjecting them to punishments according to the school's code of conduct. Our current educational curriculum is not relevant to the reality of its students, nor does it equip them with the tools and knowledge required to succeed in this life. It is nothing but a ramble of past events to spend the time. It is the ministry's responsibility to deal with the situation by training the teachers in exam writing and conditioning the “License to Teach” as a mandatory obligation to employ a teacher. In addition to all of this, education must be reformed to relate to the current events and reality of its students.
