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Evil Exams

Interesting and sad read on an unique manifestation of exam anxiety. The depth of despair is clear: 

 The exam season is a highly stressful time for students because failing the tests means having to stay in school another year to retake them. Each year, the pressure from these tests are so high that last year some students even wrote, on the comment section of the Ministry of Education and Culture's Instagram account, that the tests made them want to die. 

 The use of exams to pass/fail kids or sort them on a scale to determine their eventual fate, classify them as gifted or not are all inherently stressful exercises for kids and the parents. Yet when a large population has to be processed for decision making there is no other economical and standardized way that would appear somewhat equitable. What we gain in illusion of equity we lose in the quality of outcomes. The larger the throughput of the system, the worse the outcomes and also the opportunity for the privileged few to game it to their advantage.

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