Sometimes it almost scares you to see which attitudes are widespread among Norwegian teachers. In an article on news Ytring, Andreas Narin Arntsen, lecturer at Akademiet Ypsilon VGS, writes that it is not “fair to torture the students” with exams to test the teachers’ grading. “Exposing 15-year-olds to stress that 20-year-olds are supposed to deal with is just mean,” writes Arntsen. He further believes that Norwegian students “…have to go through a scary and unfair exam that potentially changes their future possibilities”. Arntsen presents a rather violently negative characterization of having an exam, and frankly, it’s almost like hearing an echo of students who want to get away as cheaply as possible with the least possible effort. “The purpose of the school is to facilitate learning and impart knowledge. In May and June, however, the main focus is on sorting”, Arntsen begins his chronicle with, but is it really that simple? What about preparing students for life’s challenges, training them in self-discipline, concentration and work effort? It is also an important mandate that the school must strive to fulfill. Having worked as a teacher for 40 years in a Norwegian school, my experience is not that the students face too great challenges that “torment” them, but that a large majority of Norwegian teachers consider the students to be such fragile beings that they must be shielded almost from any challenge that might stress them. One does not become fully formed individuals if the adults remove any form of stress and challenge in the pupils’ schooling. Growing and maturing requires the student to face challenges at levels where they are able to master them. And a 15-year-old is, in my eyes, absolutely capable of passing an exam. Instead of removing the challenges, the teachers’ task must be to motivate, build up the students’ confidence in their own abilities and courage to have an exam where they get to test their own abilities to perform and to handle stress. It is not without reason that today’s young people are called the curling generation. In front of them, an adult generation walks and sweeps away every obstacle. Arntsen writes that he knows many students who he knows have the knowledge and abilities to perform, but who do poorly in the exam because stress. I can answer that I know many students who underperform throughout their schooling because they do not face challenges that motivate them to do their best. Experiencing stress is not exclusively an evil. On the contrary, it is often necessary for us humans to perform at our peak and give our very best. And 15-year-olds are generally not fragile leaves of parsley that must be protected from all kinds of demands to perform at their best. Ask a sportsman/woman how stress helps to motivate them to perform at their best. The problems Arntsen points out, which in and of themselves have something to do, can be solved very easily in other ways than removing the exam. The injustice of only some appearing for the exam can be easily solved by everyone appearing for one of the subjects. And the problem that there is so much time left in the school year after the exam can easily be solved by moving the exam to a later time, or by saving part of the syllabus for after the exam. For an old, experienced teacher, it is frightening to see how the school is developing into constantly expecting less and less from the students. Everything must be easy, the challenges must be removed and everything that can trigger stress must be out of the school. Life is not like that. Students need challenges to grow and mature. Dealing with stress is a part of life. FOLLOW THE DEBATE:
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Students are not tormented by exams – Statement
