When we think of June we think of watermelon, windy days and weddings. When Syrians think of June only one thing comes to their minds: TESTS.
June is the month when colleges give their final exams, and it’s the month when all 9th graders take their tracking exam, but it is mostly the month of the Bacoloriate test. This is a test that Syrians take upon completing their 12th grade year, which is in itself just a glorified test prep course. It covers everything they have learned from the womb to that day.
Students spend literally months preparing seriously for this test, different portions of which are given on different days all throughout the month of June. As it draws nearer, the life of the entire family comes to a halt. They plan other family events around it (as in, “No, you can’t have your baby in June! Rasha has her Bacolorite! You’ll just have to get induced in May or cross your legs until July.”)
Here’s the up side: if you do well on the tests, you get your choice of college majors and your entire university experience is free of charge. Here’s the down side: if you do poorly, you get stuck with a narrower choice of college majors such as Gas Pumping or Professional Toenail Clipping. Of course if you do poorly you can also choose to pay a king’s ransom to a private university, but king’s ransoms are hard to come by.
Here’s why I loath this system: One of my students was helping his sister study for the B., and this took up a huge amount of his time and hers. She wants to be a pharmacist and needs high math and science scrores. So the night before the math portion of the test, as she was (finally) getting ready to turn in, her brother stepped over the pile of books on her bedroom floor and directly onto her glasses. Of course she had no time to get them replaced; the test was in the morning! So she went sans eyewear, discombobulated and disoriented, and came out distraught, having done poorly on the math exam. Now she may not qualify for pharmacy school.
This idea of pinning all one’s 13 years of school onto one moment in time like that is terrifying. So terrifying, in fact, that they have ambulances parked outside the schools on the test days. And they use them. I heard of one guy who dropped dead of a heart attack during his Bacoloriate. Of course he may be urban legend, but the point is that the stress of these tests is somewhat akin to what a bomb squad feels when their beepers go off.
Many other countries operate on the Bacoloriate system. In Britain the IGSE is a similar set-up, although I’m not sure how it functions or what its stress level is. Having been weaned on the educational theory of multiple intelligences and the anti-standardized-test movement, and having seen the ambiguous or downright wrong answers expected on TOEFL, GED and ACT tests, I object to them all. The very idea of multiple choice tests makes me feel boxed in, and claustrophobia rears its fearful head.
Since it is so rigorous, if you have passed the Bacoloriate with good marks in Syria you are welcomed with open arms at any university in the Middle East – or even Europe if your language skills are good. Syria is known as the be all and end all when it comes to college entrance exams. Which is good for the people who do well. But look for the ones who didn’t at your local funny farm or gas station.
I’ve heard about these exams, but I didn’t know that it was that insane, subhan Allah! Thanks for sharing. It’s a real insight into their education system, however backward it might seem to us North Americans!