WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1987, PAGE 5 With Christmas season upon us, a semi-annual plague lias hit schools. Public, private and high schools, as well as colleges and universities, have varying degrees of the infliction. The disease? Exams. To call exams an infliction goes against popular feeling. And popular will, fueled in no little part by ignorance and superstition, calls for "a return to the basics" -which usually includes a call for province-wide exams and rigorous testing. Those who lead the call will equate them with higher standards. Would it were so. Much of our educational system, despite modern dressings, reflects patterns laid down long ago for reasons long forgotten. Take, for example, the July and August vacations. My grandfather attended school after the age of nine, only during the winter months, when his labor could be spared. When he was fourteen, he could be spared not even then. His formal education ended. But long after we have ceased to be an agricultural nation, the July-August vacations persist. Why? Because change would not be politically popular. Why bother? The same with exams: once, exams may have been thought to be realistic measures of achievement. Even that is doubtful. But supposing that we could test students at the end of Grade 5 to see if they could pass to the next Grade. Our school system would not have the political will to apply such tests. Why? Ask any teacher who has had a class of thirty students, half of whom could not pass a test. Would any teacher in his/her right mind flunk half a class? Not on your life! Any wise teacher soon learns the smart thing to do: take whatever marks you get on a test and "bell" them -assume a normal distribution, and give, say, four A's, seven B's, fourteen C's, seven D's and four F's. Students would all rather get A's, but at least everybody ends up with something, except the four kids who flunked, and WITH OUR FEET UP by Bill Swan Wrong reasons we've been setting them up to think of themselves as losers, anyway, so even they're not surprised. Besides, they'll get back at us later when they cost more in legal aid, social assistance, bail, jail and parole, than we spent on their whole education. But that's another story. Worse, perhaps, comes the realization that exams exist mostly for political reasons: parents want them, expect them. You want to know exactly how your Grade 5 child compares with one of the same age in England? Tests exist which will take whole classrooms and compare. But don't ask that question: you may not want to know the an- swer. Instead, we expect classroom teachers to prepare their own tests and simultaneously ask them to be meaningful. The whole mess lies in our failure to take schools seriously and our insistence that children should. In the midst of the teachers' strike in Toronto last fall, the greatest outcry came from parents, not because children were missing instruction, but because children at home were causing a problem for their parents. If w relly elivedin sandrosana xam, ld If we really believed in standards and exams, w oi test students rigorously at set intervals. Say at ages six, nine and twelve we would measure reading level, math ability, physical dexterity, strength, hat size and musical "ar. This is not far off the proposed province-wide testing which has been proposed. It would yield a delicious set of numbers, would satisfy reactionary crities and would be stultifying to students. It won't work -which is likely why we'll do it. You might gather from the above that I don't favor examinations. You would be right. If you also were to gather that i think our schools are not in great shape you would be wrong. In my position as a post-secondary teacher, each fall I meet a new crop of students who are the product of thirteen or more years of education; these students are a good barometer of the health of our school system. And the·report card? Every year the level of students inproves. Not, I might say, because of exams; rather, in spite of them. Learning is a self-centred activity; any learning you do because someone else has decided it would be good for you will be done for the wrong reasons. The return to province-wide testing, for instance, would give us lots of information about where our students are compared with one another and perhaps with other jurisdictions. That is wonderful stuff for administrators, and can be used to whip up political donkeys to ride off in all directions. What such tests will not do is to help studen- ts learn better. As long as we keep thinking that exams and tests are the answer to educational problems, we will be like the far- mer who keeps digging up his carrots to see if they are growing. Program gives work experience to needs students By EMILY PARE Five years ago while teaching at Glenholme public school in Oshawa, Tina Herder decided to start a work experience program for students with special needs. "I felt some of the students were underachieving in the sheltered classes." With the Durham Board of Education, Herder works to find modified working facilities for mentally handicapped students to give them experience before graduating from high school. Herder works with three schools and 44 students, 25 of them placed in the workforce. They range in age from 15 - 21 years. "The students are exposed to everything in the work area," she says. Students spend one to three days per week in the community. They are not paid and receive no credit for their work. But, as Her- der explains, it is difficult to give credit to a student who is graded by their self achievements and not academics. Herder works with three schools, Glenholme and R.S. McLaughlin in Oshawa and Henry St. in Whitby. Each student has an assigned teacher who visits the area in which they work every two weeks and evaluates them every two months. Before the student goes out into the workforce, he or she must show that their knowledge about proper attire, mannerisms and bus transit has greatly improved or that the student shows ability to work out- side the classroom. "Most of the placements are very successful," says Herder. Some of the students can be seen working at the local grocer or at hospitals. They perform môdified tasks to suit their capabilities. No one was hurt when a small light plane piloted by a Pickering man was forced to make an emergency landing on Ritson Rd. in Oshawa Sunday afternoon. Pilot Graham Hedges and his passenger, Brian Lipop of "Most of the employers become very pleased with the students and hire them full-time or for summer work," says Herder. The students, while in the work area, are treated as any other em- ployee except for special con- sideration when training for their Bowmanville were returning from Peterborough when the plane's engines stopped. Heciges toia police he had a choice between landing on houses or on the street. The Dlane slid into position: extra time with instruc- tions kept short and simple. "The main problem can be fin- ding placements," says Herder. "Not many employers know about the program and become ap- prehensive about getting involved with the mentally handicapped." a cement hydro pole, spun once and came to rest against the pole. Damage to the plane is estimated at $15,000. The Canadian Aviation safety board is investigating the in- cident. IT'S A GOOD TIME FOR THE GREAT TASTE Plane lands on Ritson Rd. 1