The Tawjihi…the last government’s war on society.
One would think that the nightmare of the Tawjihi (the final high school exams) ends with personal salvation, whether through graduation or the graduation of one’s children or grandchildren perhaps. But it seems that this nightmare continues like a perpetual catastrophe and setback that appears annually before us, affirming that we will not take a step forward, but rather the opposite. We will continue to be pushed backward until we are completely crushed against the wall. And how abundant are the walls and barriers in our unfortunate and defeated Palestinian existence.
Likewise, one would think that the Tawjihi would take a different direction after the years of COVID-19 and after a school year spent amidst teacher strikes. How much have students actually learned in recent years? And how well-prepared are Tawjihi students actually for the exams?
A Minister of Education comes every time to raise slogans of change and illusory achievements of this terrifying system that he believes he has embodied, compared to his predecessor. Yet, students find themselves each time in a system even more terrifying than the previous one, between education that is declining further and exams whose difficulty escalates, shattering what remains of their dreams. It’s as if the Tawjihi is all that is left for this wretched government to control and undermine the people.
The scene of a student screaming and crying after the English exam epitomizes the magnitude of the disaster as if the frustration experienced by the people is not enough. This system of distortion comes to break the newly formed dreams of the youth, which may have held some hope amid a systematic process of crushing awareness from every direction.
Sometimes I think that this authority, with its various masters, exists to eliminate us from every angle and at every opportunity, until we become the pinnacle of destruction, descending further into decline and collapse, with each ruler adding their own failures to deserve the perpetuation of their position.
The children of the ruling elite and their descendants have freed themselves from the nightmare of the Tawjihi and have entrenched their failure on the children of the people. Their children go to schools that have rid themselves of this failed oppressive system, turning towards international education systems like the baccalaureate and the SAT.
In Jerusalem, the occupying authority advances the Bagrut (Israeli matriculation) as if it were a precious treasure, after settling the matter of education in its favor. There is no need for exorbitant funds for parents to rid themselves of the burden of this failed system, and students do not need to exhaust themselves to prove their abilities and avoid despair. Then we shed crocodile tears, condemn, and reject, as falsehoods attempt to control curricula, education, and heritage, starting with accepting that the student becomes a “subject” to be paid for by the Israeli Ministry of Education, and ending with the imposition of the Bagrut as an educational system.
How did this repressive and helpless authority manage to turn our worst fear of curriculum imposition into an anticipated dream, succeeding only every year in renewing the declaration of its catastrophic control over us through this failed and ignorant system?