HSC exams reduce children’s education history to a meaningless number
Children around NSW are frantically preparing to sit the HSC, but are these sad stand-ins for rites of passage even serving their proposed purpose anymore? Louise Roberts isn’t so sure.
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Every year in NSW we take a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds and reduce them to a number, their lifetime of achievement to date boiled down to a mere statistic.
And this week — as the first HSC exam begins and those teen moods lurch with anxiety — we’re doing it again.
It’s the closest thing we have to a rite of passage that pretty much everyone takes part in, a coming of age ritual that we hope will launch them into adulthood.
Is this really the best we can offer young people?
Yes, of course, this year as every year we hear the calls that the HSC is “not the be all and end all”, and that even with a less than stellar result, happiness and career success can still be on the cards.
Well, up to a point.
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But what if the problem is not with the HSC itself, but with the notion that the tertiary education it promises to unlock is, for many, a false promise?
It seems cruel to tell young people to aim for scores for university courses which guarantee a hefty HECS debt but not necessarily the job to help pay it off.
In the digital fast forward of their lives, we have lost the art of aligning the individual with their society. The young mind with its mentor.
Because for the six years of high school it’s been term after term of sleep, eat, school, eat and study on repeat peppered with some light relief in the blessed realm of friends, family and downtime.
That’s the ritual. That’s what we did as teenagers and so to our kids following the same path. More than 75,000 of them sat the English on Thursday, for example. But consider it in terms of how this helps our boys become men and our girls become women.
The aim is to make them productive members of society but depression and mental illness are on the rise.
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It’s pressure at every turn. A parent over-involved or over-protective we know will raise not the perfect child but an anxious one.
Yet we perpetuate the narrative that our kids will never get a job unless they achieve the perfect ATAR, somehow guaranteeing a perfect life and pay packet well into their sunset years.
I’m not discouraging teenagers from study because after all that is vital intellectual discipline.
And we want to keep kids focused on trying hard but it is not the definition of them as employees, parents, partners and considerate citizens.
Although modern mums and dads might like to think they inventing parenting, there’s much we can learn from taking a step back.
Rites of passage give teens a sense of purpose and benchmark in maturity so if we are going to ram home the HSC message, then we have to lay out those mental and physical challenges as well.
Sure the typical traditions are baptisms, confirmations, school graduation ceremonies, bar mitzvahs and the like. But our child-centric society means opportunities to help them develop maturity have to be created by us.
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Give them a level of discomfort that doesn’t involved sweating over passages from Shakespeare. Deliver disappointment in context, use the word “no” as a guide not a weapon and let them be bored. It’s a genius move.
But when you look at teens, they are inadvertently creating their own challenges to earn the respect of their peers. Is that the symbolism of adulthood — popping smuggled ecstasy tabs and drinking schooners until they pass out on the footpath?
Many teachers will tell you of the increased and unrealistic role parents expect them to play in raising their kids. Yes they needed to be guided into adulthood but that’s not something to delegate. You have the challenge them yourself so they don’t take the reckless or easy path.
The HSC result does not have to define a life and our kids should know this.
One example is my friend’s son who was the classic class clown. Diagnosed with learning difficulties and ADHD in primary school, he struggled. High school was no different. Sport was his favourite thing but maths would have him agonising over his textbook before he just gave up.
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He worked towards a trade taking vocational subjects, as well as history for a bit of fun.
What surprised us is that he discovered a gift for history. His essays sang, his marks soared and he found his passion. But he thought without an ATAR he had missed the boat. Not so.
A few weeks after the exams were over, a forward-thinking history teacher suggested he speak to a couple of universities, and one instantly showed interest.
They wanted to see his history results, which turned out to be first in the class. They offered him the opportunity to get his teaching degree, majoring in history. He had to do a couple of bridging courses, but joined the degree midway through the year. He believes he has found his calling — although sport will probably remain his first love.
And what an addition to the teaching profession this young man will be. A person who knows what it is like to struggle, but also how to chase his dreams and win. Not defined by HSC.
Wouldn’t you classify that as an educational and life win? I would.