Re: The Loaded Dog: HSC exams - Sydney Morning Herald
+1.
It's incredibly annoying and kind of sad that I can't remember the last english lesson where the words "HSC exam'' weren't mentioned. Remember a couple of years ago when people were going all up against anorexia/ bulimia? All those ''the fashion industry is shallow'' statements? Well, the focus society places on HSC, uni results and what you major in, etc is as shallow as that. Some people don't have the mental and physical strength to get into 90 +. If you have ADHD, Dysthmia studying is made 100 times harder. Academia is so competitive and ugly, I have friends who refuse to help each other when it comes to school work to simply ''get ahead'' and laugh at there poor results. It is awful and wrong that people on here are terrified of their families around Christmas time. And then someone has to say ''the HSC isn't everything'' and I always cringe, because yes, we know that, but society has made a stigma towards people who undergo TAFE or don't go to university- and hence, it's humiliating. You will be typecasted as a dumb idiot that didn't try. You will instantly be compared to your peers and siblings.
I honestly haven't learnt anything worthwhile in my last 6 years at school. Except useless ''exam technique.'' If I were an author, I'd hate my novels to be studied during year 11 & 12.
Plus, if you are going to have a conversation with me or perhaps a HSC student, perhaps you can talk about something else besides the exams?
Im sorry, but most of the pressure that has been applied to parents in their times under the academic spotlight has affected their ideology of how academia is now today. What Im saying is that during their time it was nigh on impossible to get a good job without getting good marks. You had to get good in your HSC in order to get a job. Australia is also a very multicultural society which adds to this pressure. The stereotype that immigrant parents pressure their kids is true because they have seen bad things in their home countries. And this is very much a true stereotype which is valid in assessing a lot of immigrant parents.
Though in modern soicety there are many pathways to get good jobs and to get into a good uni, and there are many opportunities in life now compared to many decades ago the ideology that the HSC is very important still rests on the minds of many parents and you cant blame them. After all who are they going to trust? Their own life experiences with what life has, or a 17/18 year old kid who says the HSC isnt that important (yes it might be true but its hard to believe). Society does not place emphasis on academia it simply places emphasis on money and power and therefore the problem does not lie in academia and learning and in pressures to learn, but the problem lies within society's emphasis on the value of money and fame.
And in my opinion there is nothing wrong with society placing emphasis on money because going down to the very roots of it humans need to survive and in this day and age you need money. You want to live a good life without having to rely on the dole right? Well then 30 years ago if you didnt want that to be your fate then you needed to work incredibly hard in the HSC, nowadays this is less the case, and once this generation becomes the parents of the age they will tell their kids that their HSC isnt the most important thing in your life.
This nihilistic view of the HSC is just as annoying as the one that the HSC is the most important thing in your life, its ridiculous. Saying that no one should be caring about the HSC because there are more important things in life, yes maybe for you the more important thing is happiness (lol), for other people its living life with a lot of money in order to keep a family running, in order to live safe and to live an although stressful an uneventful life of money earning and spending.
I disagree completely that academia is too competitive and ugly. Academia doesnt have to be nihilistic you know, there are some people who hate maths but are willing to do 4U for the scaling, there are people out there who hate Law and do it for the money,
and there is nothing wrong with that. The reason why there is nothing wrong with that because it is all based on the philosophy that the world is a dog-eat-dog world, the philosophy that you need money in order to live a safe life and it is due to that philosohpy that people are so competitive about academia, in the end I can easily say that about 50% of the doctors of the world actually are doctors because they truly truly enjoy it, and the rest are all money driven and that is absolutely fine as long as their job is done right.
Academia is a wonderful and very beautiful thing and so is competition, competition allows us to see the extent of what the human brain can show us. The Russians being the first to space was a great engineering and scientific achievement and was only available to come about due to the rivalry and competition between the Soviets and the US (then comes Apollo moon landing etc.) I could go on further and further about how competition has advanced the human civilisation and how it has shown the true potential of the human brain. The ability the human brain has if we just put in a little grunt work.
If you havent learnt anything worthwile during the last 6 years of your schooling and you are typecasted as a dumb idiot then they have a point. Its stupid to simply ignore this education and be totally ignorant about it 'oh whinge whinge the world isnt how I like it to be, too competitive whinge whinge'. But of course maybe you also didnt learn anything because of your decision to pick crappy subjects (still your fault for picking them). Even though Im only at the beginning of my HSC I can easily say that I have learnt ALOT of things about the world around me, about philosophy and and at the same time picking up good life skills.
Ridiculous.
