Just another dimension?

Saturday, October 27, 2007
Tough PSLE -vvw

Occasionally, parents write to the newspaper en masse, complaining about how tough the PSLE papers are in that particular year, especially the math exam. This year is one of those years.

I always find it amusing when parents do that. They seem to think that if the exam is tough, students will score lower and find it harder to get into a good school. Apparently, it doesn't matter that everyone else (i.e. the competition) does as badly in the exam.

Parents simply prefer artificially inflated PSLE scores even if it does nothing to help their children. Perhaps it's so that they can show off to other parents how high their kids scored in the PSLE. And if the student can't get into a good school, they can always blame it on luck. "See the high PSLE score? Our son is clearly qualified. He's just unlucky." The high PSLE score is really about making the parents feel good about themselves and their offspring.

But if you really want the high PSLE score so badly, don't complain when your child is taking the PSLE, you should complain the year before that. Each year of massive complaints is usually followed by a year of easy PSLE. Take 1993 for example, the year I had my PSLE. In 1992, everyone complained how the PSLE was particularly difficult that year. So in 1993, they made it easy. Yes, some people would still say the PSLE was tough in 1993 but hey, someone in the cohort managed to score 292, no top student from any other year even came close.

-- permalink --
Yiheng made 10:17 AM

1 Comments:

You know what upsets people? not getting As. I don't understand why schools have to give out B and C or even F grades to students. It just makes them feel miserable and bad about themselves. They should give everybody As. Once you eliminate all basis of comparison, everybody will feel happy about themselves
By Soqcrates, at 3:13 PM




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