Maturity test in the corona dilemma
My daughter is sitting on pins and needles. If you can even call it that, given the circumstances. She was about to finish school when the virus arrived and threw everything into disarray.
And she still doesn't know whether she will still have to take the Matura. Or whether the federal government will decide to go with the preliminary grade and give her year the Matura. In that case, the school-leaving exam would be cancelled.
The aftertaste of coitus interruptus would remain.
And as so often these days, she is torn as to what she should think. On the one hand, a cancelled Matura would of course save her a tonne of stress. It's not for nothing that many adults remember their written and oral exams with a faint shudder, even decades later. And quite a few people continue to have nightmares into old age. I, for example, often dream in horror that I have to take a maths A-level exam after not having studied for it for around thirty years.
On the other hand, there would always be the aftertaste of coitus interruptus: isn't the examination at the end a part of the process that would otherwise remain incomplete? Wouldn't it be fair to give school leavers some kind of closure?
But what does fair mean? Wouldn't it have been fair if my mum had been allowed to celebrate her milestone birthday with her family, as she had planned? But she wasn't allowed to - and who knows how many more milestone birthdays she has left.
Either way, this year will bear coronavirus scars in many respects. There will certainly be students who feel deprived of the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge. The virus is not fair. It is throwing all our lives into disarray and has robbed us all of certain opportunities.
And so my daughter sits as if on pins and needles. Every day she wavers between: Yay, my school career is over and I've been relieved of most of the stress. Or: I've worked so hard and now we're standing in the woods and it's just: It's all right now, you can all go, find your own way and oh yes, you still have your school-leaving certificate here.
Of all the dilemmas that have to be decided these days, both solutions seem manageable. Because either way, in the end it means: school is over, it was nice and now have a nice life. Whether my daughter sets off with a regular or a gift school-leaving certificate in her luggage - it will hardly affect her future.
Michèle Binswanger's diary at a glance:
- Zeiten-Paradox im Lockdown
- Ausgehungert nach Freunden
- Lockdown-Bilanz und eine Prise Optimismus
- Frühling und die Kunst, traurig zu sein
Michèle Binswangers reports on her experiences in the home office in her new lockdown mum blog. From now on, the mum of two will be blogging twice a week - on Sundays and Wednesdays. Her blog appears on www.tagesanzeiger.ch and www.fritzundfraenzi.ch.
