Look Through Your Window
Eulogizing The Validation Wrought of a Battered Education System
"Driven to the brink of deadly desperation, students now speak of killing themselves, unable to face the grief of their year-long efforts going in vain."
The clock ominously strikes 4, and I can hear my heart creaking against my chest in chilling undertones. I stay still, breathing heavily, and choking on an anxiety that has become an extension of my encumbered existence.
If my will allowed me to look through my window, I’d see that the world has painted itself in hues of early dawn; Morning dew laces every leaf dangling from the damp window sill, the sky blushes in response to an incandescent sun’s golden kiss, and the remnants of a starry sky coat themselves in invisible ink: still alive, just momentarily unseen.
If my will allowed me to look through my window, I'd have seen the way every element of an ignored beauty blinked and blended into something beyond the blue of a brightly glossed D- A D that has embossed itself into my mind’s only memory.
And if I could hear over the carnage of my scrappily taped confidence, I’d hear the humane hope of my thirteen-year-old self putting up a picture of NYU’s violet flag on the wall- a picture that now lays discarded as a stage for dust bunnies and bugs.
On the 11th of August, I woke up to a D for a subject I had dedicated my life to. For the next few days, the drag of failure blinded me to all else but, “my permanently ruined future”. I ignored calls and texts, too consumed by self-pity to be bothered by anyone else.
I couldn’t for the life of me, understand how and why I received the grade. In my heart, I felt sorrow for the person who bled ink. The person who spent the better half of her life reading every genre of literature, writing at three am like an obsessive addict, scoring the highest for every exam and test, and falling in love with every visible library.
So much so, that she hadn’t realized how her best years had passed her by, leaving her with absolutely nothing to show for it. But back when she honed her passion to rhythmize its love, not to replace its loss, life and its riches resembled Tolstoy and Woolf. It wasn’t a teenage heartache-like experience, but it was enough.
Days later, I unlocked my phone – a step up from curling up in bed and listening to Folklore for 48 straight hours. I was expecting to be barraged by students celebrating their success and unbridled glee at finally seeing the fruition of their work. But rather shockingly, I saw the very opposite.
Almost everyone I spoke to had dropped from predicted A’s to all D’s. Students who were known for their accomplishments in their chosen subject dropped down to U’s and “Not Graded". The struggle to comprehend such failure isn’t simply from their prior achievements, but also the levels of confidence students left the examination halls with. A hundred students failing is a coincidence, but in no plausible way, is almost every student failing anything but a scandal.
CAIE and AQA results across the country have seen cosmic drops that have so far, gone unexplained. Recently having visited my school, I’ve witnessed parents queued in lines to meet a teacher for a re-evaluation of the grades. Upon requesting the same, I was told that looking at the volume of complaints, I'd be waiting for the next five hours for a five-minute meeting.
What’s more is, upon looking further into CAIE’S sparkling history, it seems as though such colossal mishaps are the norm. Anonymous sources claim that last year, students scoring consistent A’s had complained about their grades and demanded a re-evaluation. Instead of correction, they were met with a blasphemous lie. These students were told that their papers had been “misplaced”. These magical disappearances to the Upside Down of CAIE’s imagination have never re-surfaced, and their constant mess-ups are now taking an expensive toll on students, who now sacrifice their sanity to prove a value that doesn’t fit examination criteria.
Driven to the brink of deadly desperation, students now speak of killing themselves, unable to face the grief of their year-long efforts going in vain.
One of CAIE’S victims despondently stated, “I felt hollow — as if a tide, just as mighty as all my apprehensions, came and took away with it every ounce of myself I had been pouring into this one long academic year. And all it left for me was mouthfuls of verdicts that never knew how many sleepless nights I spent trying to be academically 'worthy'.”
The mental distress doesn’t end here.
As of now, an infinite number of students will be forced through the toil of re-sitting year 12, studying for year 13, sending in university applications, submitting external exams, community service, extra curriculars, along with regaining a sense of self amongst the chaos.
Why is this happening? Most students believe this to be a profiteering scheme. Applying for re evaluation, and then re-examination is a costly affair. Re-evaluation as a separate procedure costs a whopping 85GBP (roughly 371 AED). Per the high number of applicants for both, the revenue generation is off the charts, and even after, the grade is likely to rise the slightest or not at all.
Regardless of right or wrong, it has become increasingly evident that students have been scammed into wrongfully assigned grades. On a broader scale, the callousness of the situation makes us rethink our perspective on an ‘academic validation’ that is directly pipe-lined from “educational” organizations that are contused of such bruised morals.
Should we really be depending on these malfunctioning systems to determine our emotional stability, our identity, and the belief we associate with our capabilities?
Students are understandably perturbed by university admissions and the turmoil they can expect to face from CAIE in the upcoming year. But the regression wrought by that academic fall pales in comparison to what could become of using the board as an indicator of potential.
Don’t ask a box that places your love and expression on a standardized scale what success is supposed to look like. A box like so can only enclose hope and heart. Choosing to embody the evolving sensations of people's reactions to your work is what makes that work worthwhile- A twinge of remorse or wonder inculcated by your words, a vicariously reinforced romanticism, or empathy intricate enough to initiate action. This emotivism can do what no gleaming report card can do or show.
So tomorrow, instead of staying still, breathing heavily, and choking on anxiety, Look through your window.
By Tanya Tilokani, editorial intern at the attic diaries