SHS students, teachers critical of Ministry exam

The Quebec Ministry of Education’s new Grade 11 English Language Arts exam has received a lot of criticism in the press lately. And Selwyn House students and teachers are being quoted most often as leading the charge against it.

An outline of the exam was previewed by teachers last November. In a December 3 article in the Montreal Gazette, Selwyn House Senior English teacher Liana Palko described the exam as “Too long. Too unwieldy. And too easy.”

“People think it’s a dumbed-down exam,” Ms. Palko continued. “Of the whole exam, only 17 per cent of it will actually evaluate whether or not [a student] can write.”

Selwyn House Grade 11 students Harry Cape and Jake Mullan waded into the fray on December 11 with an opinion piece in the Gazette that says the exam “…insults the intelligence of all Quebec teenagers and the teachers who have been trying to bring the English language and its literature alive for their students.”

“As Grade 11 students, we are shocked and dismayed by the education ministry and its underestimation of Quebec students,” said Cape and Mullan. “…the government wants to subject us to an exam that we’re sure any Grade 6 student (in public or private school) could pass easily.”

The exam, which will be given in May, asks students to provide a written interpretation of ideas from a video and a literary piece and to discuss these in a group. Students will also be asked to create a PowerPoint presentation and to write a related newspaper article.

“Throughout the year, we analyze literary works by Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and others,” Cape and Mullan wrote. “We write analytical essays on these works, citing secondary sources, and listen to countless lectures on the significance of passages in the stories. Yet the ministry has decided that, rather than testing us on what we’ve been taught to prepare us for CEGEP and university, it will have us prepare one-minute PowerPoint presentations instead. And for that one-minute presentation, we’re given five hours to cut and paste pictures.”

In a January 6 opinion piece in The Suburban, Lester B. Pearson English teacher Michael Ernest Sweet endorsed the views of Cape and Mullan. “The time has come for a lot of speaking out in education and it need not all be done by the Grade 11 students at Selwyn House,” he wrote.

To read the Dec. 3 Gazette article, go to http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Grade+exam+gets+flak/2296374/story.html

The Gazette piece by Cape and Mullan can be found at

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/money/Government+English+exam+insulting+students/2328665/story.html

The Suburban piece by Michael Sweet can be found at

http://www.thesuburbannews.ca/content/en/3062