Blackboard bungle

Is it just me, or is there something sinister going on in the education department? No, I’m not talking about the government department of that name, and its recent mishandling of European funds. I mean the thing itself: the stuff we teach children in classrooms, and the things we ask them in school exams.

For instance: Do we like, dislike or are happy with the changes in our bodies by adolescence?

No, I’m being serious. It seems this very question (‘multiple choice’, if you please) was asked to 13-year-old students in a secondary school end-of-year exam. The subject, incidentally, was religion.

A number of questions spring to mind. First off, I was unaware that a member of a royal family was setting local exam questions these days. Who the heck are ‘we’? Why not ‘you’? (Unless, of course the students were expected to answer on behalf of everyone else.)

And besides: what, exactly, is the difference between ‘liking’ and ‘being happy with’ one’s bodily changes? Can you be ‘happy’ with something without ‘liking’ it? Or ‘like’ it while being ‘unhappy’ with it? Honestly, I don’t think a PhD scholar would be able to provide an answer... let alone a third former.

But the real issue is another. Why are 13-year-olds even being asked such awkward and invasive questions in the first place? And isn’t it discriminatory to expect someone to comment on an experience he or she may not have actually gone through? This is after all puberty we are talking about here (yes, horrible word. Sorry). And unless human physiognomy has evolved since I was a teenager, not all people pass through the ‘p’ word at precisely the same age. Some get there sooner than others. Some get there very late. So it is perfectly conceivable that a 13-year-old boy or girl would have faced that question with utter bewilderment. (Changes? What changes? etc.)

And for those who had at least an inkling what they being asked, the difficulties are even greater. This is an exam, not a group therapy session. As a rule, children tend to view exam questions suspiciously, and often answer on the basis of what they think the examiner may or may not want to hear. From this perspective, it’s an almost sadistic task they have been set. Say ‘dislike’, and you may be penalised for your honesty. Say ‘like’, and you might fall foul of some hidden commandment you didn’t know about (‘Thou shalt despise thy pubic hair with all thy heart’, or something or the sort.)

Quite understandably, the exam question seems to have upset at least one person - a religion teacher - who complained. So Grace Grima, ‘director general for quality in education’ (no, I didn’t know we had one either) felt she had to step in and clear the matter up for us.

“For this particular question, where all three options are potentially correct answers, it should be followed by a justification where students are allowed to develop their reasoning. Unfortunately in this case, the justification was not requested,” she said.
Huh? Excuse me, but what on earth do you mean, ‘all three options are potentially correct’? Adolescents were asked to express a personal opinion about recent changes to their own bodies. Those doing the asking therefore have no choice but to simply accept whatever answer they are given – whether they approve of it or not. Right or wrong doesn’t even come into the equation. Nor does reasoning. However the students feel about themselves, and however they choose to express these feelings, can only and will always be the correct answer. Full-stop.

Well, not according to the marking sheet. Incredibly, it seems the only answer deemed ‘correct’ by examiners is that adolescents should ‘dislike’ their own bodies. Grima went on to assure us all that this, too, was a ‘mistake’. But for reasons outlined above, the intended ‘correct’ version – in which any answer could be wrong, depending on the examiner’s purely subjective interpretation – was equally a mistake. And quite frankly I think the whole idea to include such a question in a school exam was an even bigger mistake.

Especially when you hear the official explanation:
‘Students need to appreciate the human body, which is created by God, even though they might feel the changes might be awkward... The message of the textbook is that the changes are positive since these form part of God’s plan.

Considering that the subject in question is religion, I suppose we shall have to set aside any personal misgivings about the premise itself. The textbook claims the human body was created by God, does it? Well, others believe it is the product of four billion years of evolution, with no input whatsoever from any supernatural being. Others still could have sworn it was the result of direct intermingling of two parent genomes through sexual intercourse (Ah, but we don’t teach adolescents such filthy things, do we? No, we just let the little buggers find out about it all by themselves...) The truth is by no means certain, but one thing certainly is: no secondary school textbook can possibly claim to know any better than anyone else.

Even without such considerations, there is something deeply flawed in the argument as a whole. If the textbook is correct, then God would presumably have also created the Rickettsia typhi bacteria... not to mention the fleas in whose stomach these bacteria live, and the rats which the same fleas call home. So shouldn’t we ask third formers whether they ‘like’ these creatures, too? And whether the deadly typhus fever they carry also forms part of God’s plan?

At a stretch the same argument can also be applied to tornadoes, tsunamis, malignant tumours, blood clots, jellyfish, traffic wardens and the AIDS virus. Unless, of course, Gaddafi was right all along, and the latter was indeed created by the Americans as part of a biological warfare experiment.

The bottom line, however, is that the very inclusion of such a bizarre question is itself highly revealing of so much that is wrong with our education system as a whole. Whichever way you look at it, it is simply not the business of a school exam – regardless of the subject – to interfere with teenagers’ perceptions of their own physical development. That’s the business of professional psycho-therapists, and even these only come into the picture when there are serious problems involved.

In a wider context, it is simply not the business of the education system to be ‘instructing’ students how to feel... as if there was a ‘right way’ and a ‘wrong way’ to feel about oneself. This is the stuff that political ideologies are built on, and for want of a better word it is dangerous; and though I can’t say this with any certainty, I suspect that this little incident is but the tip of an iceberg. From the little I’ve seen and heard about such classroom capers, it seems that a good deal of what passes for ‘education’ is actually a subtle attempt to inculcate a very specific – and highly questionable – viewpoint in children’s minds.

How much more of what we teach in schools is actually propaganda in disguise, I wonder? Perhaps they ought to include that as a multiple choice question in a school exam. I’d love to see the answers. Wouldn’t you?