Elevenths held history: there were ridiculously easy questions, but nothing to cheer about

“The questionnaire mostly* corresponds to the content and requirements of the program. This is good,” teacher Antanas wrote on his Facebook account.

This asterisk in the statement means that there were exceptions, however. Let’s say question 23, where the caricature was depicted, according to the teacher’s assessment, “goes out” of the framework of the program.

“Finland and Austria are not mentioned in the syllabus among the countries that should be studied when learning about democracies and dictatorships in the 20th century. The cartoon shows that Finland and Austria seem to have fallen off the branch of neutral countries, but does that mean they were neutral democratic countries or neutral non-democratic countries? We can’t judge that from the cartoon, we need to know that, but the program doesn’t require us to know,” explained teacher Antanas.

Question 27 tests whether students know which country Maastricht is in. The program, according to the teacher, does not require it.

“My students know what the Maastricht Treaty is, how European economic and political integration took place from the Schumann Plan to Maastricht. But why examine where Maastricht is? In my opinion, this question is inappropriate – the knowledge/skills defined in the program topic “European integration” are not being examined.

I would be a student dissatisfied with my result – I would file an appeal precisely because of these issues,” wrote teacher Antanas.

The teacher positively assessed the fact that the agreement reached by the Association of Lithuanian History Teachers with the National Education Agency and the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports regarding the scope of intermediate content was followed – there were no questions from the part of the program from which it was agreed that students would not be examined this year.

“Great,” said the teacher.

But as the history teacher noticed, there were ridiculously easy questions whose purpose he didn’t understand.

“If they represent what we want from history learning in grades 11-12 – then… sad. Do you need to study history to distinguish between the most famous Greek and Roman buildings?”, wrote teacher Antanas.

Another example he gave is the question about the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

“The picture everyone saw in the 9th grade with a clearly visible French text is inserted – how is it possible to mark that the declaration was published in the USA, Italy or England?”, asked the teacher Antanas.

A couple more questions also made me wonder if these are really eleventh grade level assignments.

The teacher noticed that there were many recognition-matching questions in the task.

“Octavian Augustus – Principate; Philip IV the Fair – clan monarchy; Dante – “Divine Comedy”; Copernicus – heliocentrism; Jefferson is one of the “founding fathers” of the United States (the founders of “Delphi”)”, wrote teacher Antanas.

According to him, such questions are also among “structural questions”, whatever that means.

“For example, in question 16, the source is given, but the students are only asked to identify which ruler is being talked about here,” said the teacher.

According to him, these are also very easy questions, the evil of which is that their presence leads to superficial learning, which is based on a lot of content and learning only to recognize, connect, distinguish, and not to analyze, compare, evaluate.

“That’s why I’m a big hater of tests. In history lessons, we are supposed to develop historical thinking skills, but the test takes us somewhere else. It would be my will – there would be no test part in the exam at all,” wrote teacher Antanas.

According to the teacher, maybe you can be happy that there are easy questions – students get easy points.

“But what is the purpose of the examination then?” What do we want 17-year-olds to learn in history lessons?

When placed next to our intermediate and other European countries’ or international programs’ history exams at the secondary education level, ours would look like… No way. And that hurts me the most. I wish we could be proud of our history curriculum and practice, but that doesn’t work very well. And the intermediate one is just one part of the whole big picture”, teacher Antanas assessed.

The eleventh examination session has already ended with the history midterm examination. As already announced, it is announced as a pilot. Students will be able to choose whether to take part of the score collected here to the matriculation exam or not. It is not yet clear when a decision will be made.

If you want to try solving the eleventh grade history midterm test yourself, you can do that here.