Even the befuddled educators themselves! But the poison will soon drain out after a few weeks and then we will start accumulating the anger bundles for the next set of results. Usually this gathers momentum when PSLE results are out, JC pushes that a notch higher and the BGCSE is the culmination of that pent-up anger. When the BGCSE results are released, people’s tongue blades would be replaced with even sharper ones. The whole nation seems to have just completed a Basic Course In Admonishing Education Officials.
Should the government consider making this a week of mourning? I mean at this rate, the nation cannot afford this yearly haemorrhaging. I envisage the national mourning week as a week of intense prayers with ministers from mainline churches, fire churches, churches that worship through dancing and unregistered churches. We need to exorcise the ghosts of poor exam performance. Picture a pastor delivering an eulogy that goes like ‘Friends, family, fellow exam-takers... we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of our children’s academic hopes and dreams. They were taken too soon, snatched away by the cruel hand of multiple-choice questions and essays.’ When you look at the results, it seems many candidates had decided to give the ‘random guessing’ technique a thorough scientific trial. The results are further proof that exams are biased against people who love sleep. It’s a conspiracy basically. But exams provide valuable lessons - lessons like ‘Maybe I should have studied’ or ‘caffeine alone is not a substitute for knowledge’. There’s a silver lining to this though.
