CON: MIKE WHITEBEAR
Normally, high school is supposed to be an awesome time in a young person’s life. The friends, the parties, and all of the other perks that go with it are what make up some of the best years of your lives. Among the good times, however, are the bad times, like studying for the dreaded High School Exit Exam.
Not to say that it’s completely terrible, of course. It’s a nifty way to check to see if you’ve been paying attention for the last 4 years. But personally, I’m not a fan of it. Sure, the test was created with good intentions, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a requirement that should be enforced. I think that the student’s grades should speak for themselves.
Now I know what you might be thinking. “Whitebear! What if there’s some idiot who has a ‘D’ average? Is he/she actually going to be able to pass high school!?” Well, no. If that person has a low enough average, then they shouldn’t even be thinking about graduation.
You see, I think that in order to graduate, you shouldn’t rely on some exam at the end of the year. You should rely on your grades that you’ve worked on for the past couple of years. That would show how much you deserve to graduate.
If someone has a good average at the end of their high school career, then off they go. If not, then back to school for them. It’s that simple.
So in short, I believe that the exit exam is pretty much unnecessary to enforce. If we instead rely on the grades, I think things will become more efficient. Well, at least I think so…
PRO: NICOLE
As some of you have possibly heard, a recent requirement to graduate high school was instated, entailing all high school seniors take an exit exam before graduating and venturing out into the real world. The reaction to this news found people on quite opposite ends and in a state of disbelief. My reaction to the situation was more of a question, rather than an uproar: where was this “exit exam” when I was senior, and is it too late to take it?
It seems absurd, really, that one would want to take some silly test that enables them to dissipate into “the jungle,” via an amount of correct answers scribbled in on a scantron. In all honesty, to this day high school to me was, and is, a blur. It is still unclear to me as to how I ever graduated. Perhaps it was a four year streak of luck? All I know is that I was very much unprepared to enter college level courses, because college is, for lack of a better word, “hard.”
If high school is supposed to prepare us for the world, lacking a test such as the exit exam is probably not a valid system. Speaking on behalf of my generation (with slight exceptions due to English as a second language, and leave of absences), students were generally passed, without getting tested in academic subjects. In high school, there was an essay test and a math test issued that disabled you to graduate if you didn’t pass. It was a version of an “exit exam.” The problem? A monkey could have taken the test for you, hands tied behind its back. I thought I was smart because I passed it on the first time with a perfect score. Later I found out that so had everyone else. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at a community college and found that I still didn’t know how to write a well thought out, structured essay. I do believe that if I were a college English professor, I’d get pretty upset that high schools were handing me students who are unaware of the basic body of an essay. Not that it wasn’t taught in high school- I had some amazing teachers- but the truth is that I didn’t care enough to pay attention. Kind of like the school board, who never bothered to hold me back for failing an English class.
An exit exam should be issued because, due to video games, internet access, and other modern day distractions in every venue, public or private, people lose focus. Students often become dead cells, walking the halls with an anxiety to get home and jump on myspace, livejournal, or some kind of video game system that enables you to depart from reality for a few hours. Homework is more often than not the last thing on a high school student’s mind. The amount of times I didn’t do my homework because of something stupid like playing video games was ridiculous.
The exit exam should be a lesson- one that I wish I had learned the hard way- because it would stick. High school is a time of squirming your way through papers, projects, and simple homework assignments. I believe that if the exit exam is issued, and students don’t pass, then maybe they would get something from it. Perhaps it would teach them “how to roll” in the big joint.
