Friday was the day of the coronavirus final exam. All of the regions in Spain, who felt sufficiently prepared, took the exam to see if they would be promoted from Phase 0 to Phase 1 in the great de-escalation process.
Good students, such as Cantabria, Galicia, and Navarra, knew that they were sure to pass. Parts of Cataluña, such as the metropolitan area of Barcelona, did not even bother to attend the exam because they knew that they would fail. They wisely stayed at home and resolved to study harder. Valencia believed that the exam would be a mere formality though as it turned out, their expectations were overly optimistic.
All exams were corrected by a committee of ‘experts’, who preferred to remain anonymous, probably because they feared having rotten eggs and tomatoes thrown at them by those who failed. They did not wish to be pressured.
Even though their fears were understandable, I can only imagine what would occur in the university system, if students were told that their exams would be graded by a secret group of nameless professors. The protests would make headlines.
The final marks were announced Friday evening at around 20.30. The percentage of failures was about 50%. As occurs in all exams, there were mixed reactions.
The students that passed and accomplished the heroic feat of progressing to Phase 1 did so entirely thanks to their own merits (as students usually claim). Those who failed were not happy, and, instead of blaming themselves, placed the blame on the professor. This was the case of Valencia and Madrid.
Blame seeking is not an infrequent occurrence in Academia. When a university professor fails 50% of a class, the students that did not pass are not happy. The Rector’s office is also very displeased because it makes the university look bad. Therefore, when so many students fail, the professor is invariably at fault.
The reason for the disaster is that the professor did not know how to suitably enhance and stimulate the neuronal activity of the students with his/her pearls of wisdom. The professor, on the other hand, feels that he/she was totally justified in failing the clueless half of the students in the class, who had not bothered to do their homework or study for the exam.
In my younger fire-and-sword days, I had three classes of 150 university students each. I was so intense about wanting to do things right that I memorized all 450 names in the first ten days of the academic year. Despite the drawback of having a Cecil B. DeMille cast of students, I was convinced that I could transform the world of university teaching even in those unfavorable conditions.
I did the best that I could, and at least succeeded in making a lasting impression on all of my students (for better or for worse). However, during the years when I had to give class in an auditorium, the failure rate was still 70%.
Oddly enough, no student ever complained that I was unfair because the criteria were very clear. Their complaints stemmed from the fact that I was ‘too fair’. They complained about my lack of ‘flexibility’ since everyone thought that they should be regarded as a special case.
This was particularly true when the student happened to be the son or daughter of another university professor. Their birthright heightened their self-perception of specialness. I never took the students’ DNA into consideration when giving a grade despite the fact that this drastically reduced my popularity among certain colleagues.
In the case of the coronavirus final exam, the criteria for a passing grade were quite clear. Each region was required to have acceptable levels of coronavirus cases, deaths, hospital admissions, and critical care unit occupation. Not surprisingly, when the exam results were published, there was much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth among the 50% of those provinces that did not make the grade.
Failed students included both Granada, the province where I live, and Madrid, where two of my sons reside. Apparently, neither Granada nor Madrid had studied hard enough or done their homework. Granada largely failed because of the number of contagions, which has risen dramatically in the last three days. Good weather and confinement fatigue have caused people to embrace outdoor exercise with a vengeance.
In Granada, we had already seen the handwriting on the wall. We did not complain because we knew that we were doomed to failure. However, Madrid was another case entirely. Apparently, its main problem was that it did not meet the infrastructure or human resource requirements laid out in the de-escalation plan.
The Madrid authorities were aware of these deficits but decided to take the exam anyway, just in case a miracle occurred, and divine intervention saved them from the inevitable. They also hoped that an exception would be made in their case because Madrid is Madrid, the capital of Spain. The government happens to reside there (not to mention the Real Madrid soccer team).
In any exam, there are always poor students, who have not studied, but who decide to spin the roulette wheel anyway. They think that their gamble might pay off, and that perhaps the professor will pass them because their grandmother thinks that they are brilliant. Madrid apparently thought that it would be able to squeak by.
In a university exam, roulette-wheel students are usually not surprised when they fail, and thus rarely bother to complain. However, in the case of Madrid, the city government seemed genuinely surprised at the negative outcome and quickly began to look around for someone (else) to blame.
The two candidates were: (1) Madrid business leaders who mercilessly pressured the regional government because they wanted to open their businesses; (2) the national government who supposedly hates Madrid because their regional government belongs to a different political party.
The political explanation, however, was not logical, especially in view of Valencia. Like Madrid, Valencia also expected to pass because they claimed that their statistics were on target. Even though they are in the same political ballpark as the national government, they also failed. Now they are very unhappy. They thought that they had everything going for them, but they were mistaken.
On Friday evening, Dr. Fernando Simón explicitly stated on television that this was not a competition. He said that this was not an exam with passing or failing grades…. and that we were all in this together.
Hearing those words was like an epiphany. After so many years of teaching, I wondered why I had never thought to tell my failed students not to worry, that this was not an exam and that their mark did not matter. Perhaps it was because they would not have believed me.
