Tawjihi: for a better, secure, educated future

February 10, 2008 at 3:01 pm · Filed under Amman, Seriously

Around 109,222 students who registered for the winter session Tawjihi sat for the test, with approximately 4,174 students eligible to join state universities after completing the exam’s requirements. Another 11,015 students are eligible to join private universities, the minister said.

[link]

The article isn’t very clear, but let’s do some math anyway: 4, 174 eligible students is what percent of the 109,222 students who registered for Tawjihi? 3.82%
Adding 11,015 students eligible to join private universities to the 4,174 students eligible to join public universities means we have around 15,189 students eligible to enter any university in Jordan. That’s 13.9% of the initial 109,222 students, leaving us with 94,033 who can’t get into any university in Jordan.

The implications of that?
An 18-year-old boy reportedly took his own life by hanging himself with a telephone cable in Karak Governorate on Saturday after finding out he failed the Tawjihi exams, official sources said. [link]

An 18-year-old girl was saved after trying to commit suicide by swallowing 80 different kinds of pills after failing the Tawjihi. [link]

I wonder if the boy’s suicide will be understood as a message by those with the power. I know I understand. Tawjihi is a retarded, outdated system that needs some serious reevaluation. When a student is 18, with their whole lives ahead of them, they need to be encouraged, supported, and given enough options to allow them to have a good life, rather than push them to commit suicide.

This post is for the boy and the girl mentioned above, for every student who shattered his life because he wasn’t lucky to be one of the 15% of the students eligible to get higher education in Jordan, and for every student who will still have to go through to retarded system of Tawjihi.






  • http://al-arabiat.blogspot.com Mohanned

    Don’t forget that those numbers are for ones that completed the requirments this semester!
    Next semester you will see the bigger percentages, which is normally around 50%.
    So no it is not 3.82 %..

  • http://mindsonbytes.blogspot.com Isam

    oh no … not tawjihi … not again !

  • khalid jarrar

    ” When a student is 18, with their whole lives ahead of them, they need to be encouraged, supported, and given enough options to allow them to have a good life, rather than push them to commit suicide. ”

    actually, when you are 18, you need to get your lazy butt of tv, internet, psp, football field or whatever thats keeping you busy, and go study some decent 4 hours a day at least, not 18, not 12, only 4 a day, 4 out of the 24, and those would grant you entrance to most if not all majors in all universities in Jordan.

    If you are too lazy, lack the ability of commitment, lak mental ability to do that, or even bad enough in one or more of the montioned fields to the point that you dont get the 60 or 65% to get you in ANY university, maybe you are just too retarded to be in a university and you need to re-evaluate your life and priorities and get a lesson from that to actually be serious about studying when you take tawjeehi, next year, and you SHOULD fail now and have the lesson of your life?

    just get me any student that fails, and i bet you he wastes at least 6-10 hours a day doing absolutly nothing, watching tv, listening to songs and whatnot. we need to stop blaming the system and start finding ways to teach the students to be mature enough and stop fooling around and study.

    i hate it, hate it when people say ” i wasnt lucky” instead of saying i am a lazy bastard.

    that said, its nessosary to provide the moral support, the encouragement, the family support, every possible psychological help possible for those students, to understand that this tawjeehi and the whole studying thing isnt who you are, and its not what defines you as a human, a human is way more than that, but nevertheless its going to surely have the greatest impact on your social and economical level for the rest of your life. but it doesnt define you, you can be a wonderful person, doing wonders to yourself and your country, without needing to be a doctor or an engineer, and you can be a doctor, and be a complete jerk, careless and greedy, selfcentred and do nothing to improve the lives of people in your country and know nothing but the shit stuffed in your med books, and then you wouldnt really be a great person at all would you?

    i think tawjeehi is very easy, and the time given to students to study is really way more than enough, but its the pressure and the stress that makes it freaking hateful, and this is where i say all effort should be directed: giving all possible encouragement by parents, school and society, give classes for students to learn HOW TO STUDY, give them classes of some sort of group therapy to absorb their fears and talk them through the process, give them classes to discuss their dreams and hopes and what they want to be, alll that can be done by parents, but also can be done by the school, all these are aiding tools to give the student the proper atmosphere to understand the importance of gettign his butt off tv and study for some 4 decent hours a day, AND forgetting about his fears.

    just four pure-studying hours, for one school year, and your life would be much better for the rest of your life, anyone that fails to commit to that, need serious help, not only in his educational skills.

    of course, exclude a bunch of students that have some conditions that gives them excuse: medical problems, death in the family, etc. you would find that the grades that students get, represents the amounts of efforts they spent. more or less.

  • http://hareega.blogspot.com Hareega

    Khalid Jarrar,
    I agree with you that a lot of students are just some lazy idiots, but a lot of them especially Tawjihi students livining outside Amman are doing their best and studying really hard but they can’t get high scores. Some schools do not have teachers in certain subjects like Math or physics for the WHOLE year , not mentioning that the lack of teachers in the previous classes that leaves these kids unprepared for the big year. Teachers are being paid less than 150 JDs as salaries so don’t expect them to put a lot of effort in teaching the school children. There are a lot of bright students who study really hard but end up with very low scores because of these situations.
    You’ll occasionally hear about a genius in Maan or Kerak who scored 90 even though he had no books or teachers but you don’t have to be genius to achieve your goal in life, if you’re just smart that should be good enough.

  • AG

    This is obviously misinterperted as mohanned said. the 4 thousand that to qualify for the state university have failed last year’s tawjihi.
    And you would think a news source like Jordan Times would have writers who can better interpert raw information. Either that or Tarawneh is a very inarticulate man… which I doubt.

  • Ayyob Again

    To Khaled…..

    Do you really think that 4 good hours of studying each day is enough?
    I really really doubt it. Especially with these new curriculums these morons assigned for these kids. It’s proven that there are teachers and even college professors who have trouble with these exams. Especially the physics and math.
    I mean I have seen these new books and trust me, 4 hours is not enough.

    Anyway, why should a student have to face such a thing as tawjihi. People in all countries of the world graduate without such horror and go to college and do well with their lives. Why is the curriculum so damn extensive and deep in every single subject. A student should get into physics if he/she decides to study the subject as a major in college. An accountant should need the extra math as it applies to his major later on in life. But when students are being taught random hard topics with no practical application to real life, How are they expected to learn it? and if they do, How are they going to remember it 6 month or a year down the road?
    I personally this whole Tawjihi rubbish needs to be reevaluated and canceled. A country like Jordan should have a whole new system where grades prior to 12th grade are significant along with some kind of entrance exam. This way if one doesn’t want to attend college and doesnt deserve to, they can still live life without being tagged as a “college drop out”.
    As much as I hate to admit it, The higher education system in the United States is a great one. SAT’s are effective yet there not the sole determinent in one’s future. A student is measured academically along with socially and leadership wise. All these aspects should determine One’s future because a book nerd should not be ahead of the student who was socially hurt during tawjihi. Or one who can’t afford 20jd/hour private tutors.
    Such a revolution WILL be hard. The whole schooling system in the country would need to be renewed and millions of dinars would need to be spent. Yet we will see education reviatalized in Jordan in no time. I mean when a student studies 9th-12th grade, he/she will get out of highschool with more than cramming the 12th and practically ignoring all others.

  • http://www.shetoldmeso.blogspot.com Bama Bedouin

    Speaking as an educator and an ijnabeeah, I have to completely disagree with Khalid. The Tawjihi exam is based on rote memorization, if I am not mistaken. If you are good at memorization, you will do well. If you are creative, artistic, or think “outside” of the traditional box, you will do poorly. It is that simple. Any exam that you have to study for 4-6 hours every day for a whole year prior to taking does not allow you to think. It allows you to regurgitate information. A fair system would take into account all of your school experience and background – not judge the past 4 years of your life on one test.

    And Roba, my heart goes out to the families of these students. But sadly, this is a common story that I read about year after year. I have become the eternal pessimist when it comes to Tawjihi. I don’t think anyone else is listening…….

  • Amer

    I hate to break this to you, but just because you passed this flawed test does not mean you can decide that the people who don’t pass it are not smart enough. You don’t know that 10,000 people are lazy, so don’t say that.

    My Tawjihi score was a whopping 97.4%, I was on the national roster. I was disgusted with that. I did not deserve that high of a score, and I left Jordan and have been in the States ever since because of that. I do not intend to live in Jordan ever again, I just visit my family.

    4 of my friends were straight-A students who know their stuff and failed this test. They don’t memorize information, they grasp it and build on it, and they still failed.

    The fact that whatever committee corrects this test is so random in their results, and the even more disturbing fact that this test is infamous for its negative effects on people’s non-academic lives, makes the Tawjihi one of the least effective education standards in the world today.

    The test does not prepare students for the real world, relies strictly on memorizing standardized textbooks, and in a really sick way, prides itself on how hard it is to pass.

    That very test is the primary reason that students like me exit Jordan after the last test, looking for a better use of our time, energy, and brainpower.

    When the education ministry learns what they’re doing wrong, they’ll finally find out why the brightest minds are investing in foreign cultures versus their own.

  • Rania

    I agree that many (not most, I can never tell) students who fail tawjihi and fail multiple times are those who didn’t make effort. Four hours a day are enough to get you good grades if you’re a student with a strong background and effective study skills, i.e. if you’ve been making effort since the early grades. Cramming it all in one year is impossible. The importance associated with tawjihi steals all the weight off grades 9-11, which are really important years.

    As a student in the scientific stream, I found that apart from the hideous Thaqafeh 3ammeh (General Knowledge), most subjects are well-presented and the topics well-chosen without being unnecessarily thorough. The information itself doesn’t ask for memorization. It’s not what’s in the books; it’s how we’re taught it. This is because of the fact that Tawjihi results are the basis for college admission: the mark counts. One mark can stand between Architecture and Chemcial Engineering (how on earth are they related?). And so we pursue the mark, turning ourselves into memorization machines. Over the years, writing the exact words came to count. Our parents did Tawjihi, but they didn’t study like we did. They didn’t have to memorize like we did. They didn’t throw everything up on the exam paper; they remember stuff.

    One reason I’m glad I was in the tawjihi system is that I got to work on my English without compromising my Arabic, which is really important to me.