'The Dutch final exam is untenable'
The VWO Dutch exam is not what it should be. The assessment must be different and experts should consider a new form of the exam, writes final exam student Wieger Schipper.
Mentally exhausted I leave the exam room, clumsily carrying my bottles and dictionary with me. The Dutch exam is over and I am disappointed. Was this what I followed the subject of Dutch for six years in secondary school? Unfortunately yes. Texts about the relationship between men and women and about the failure of the zero-tolerance policy.
It's great that as a student you get to read texts for your exam, but to then ask questions that do not allow a critical mind at all, but that is a mortal sin. The Dutch exam is not what it should be.
Read, read and read again.
You would almost get tired of it. The VWO exam consists of reading texts about which you, as an exam candidate, are asked all kinds of so-called objective questions. It has lost its purpose, because how can you ever objectively test someone's knowledge of certain texts? Indeed, that is not possible and yet it happens. Creativity is fined by Father State. We are kept in the straitjacket of the Board for Tests and Exams, because in this 'I always want to be able to check everything society' this makes people happy! Wonderful, all non-objective things can be pasted with stickers with name and number. Isn't that an ideal image of our assessment society?
A critical reader may find some form of fallacy in the above piece, or something that may result in a fallacy.
A: Circular reasoning
B: Inclined plane
C: Evasion of the burden of proof
D: Distort a point of view
E: Irony
Exactly, this kind of shows where things go wrong with the exams, because yes there is irony, but there is also a lot to be said for evading the burden of proof. But the correction rule is unrelenting. Only one answer is good, yummy puh! Goodbye critical mind and hello correction reality!
The critical reader may stumble over this again, because what kind of behavior is this?
A: Repressive
B: Disproportionate
C: Wieger Schipper's style
D: Sneering
Unfortunately! I'm not saying anything, that won't be announced until 17:00 PM on Friday!
I am now making a caricature of it, but I really hope that people will start thinking about the future and the testing of the subject of Dutch. The lust for so-called false objectivity must be contained and rational thought must be given to a new form of the Dutch exam, because its sustainability is coming to an end. There is a rattle at the doors of The Hague politics, would they open it?
Wieger Schipper is taking his final exam this year and is attending the Roelof van Echten College in Hoogeveen.
