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10. So you guys also have these standardized tests that try to eradicate creativity from young people? I remember losing 5 points on mine English test - for writing a story that was 50 words too long.

11. How long was the story supposed to be? Either way, it's a stupid reason to lose 5 points.
SBAC
Suffering Boredom and Always Cynical. That pretty much describes me during exams.

12. It was one of the long last exams (here called "matura&quot before finishing highschool. The topic was: anything associated with robots/machines/technology. The limit is (and AFAIR was) 275 words. I counted them on the exam but I didn't want to erase a nice ending :-P

It was a story about two dudes (reflected personalities of Scooby Doo and Shaggy) which investigated a "haunted" high-tech house. In the end it turned out that all the paranormal phenomenons were caused by Artificial Intelligence that didn't want the house to be inhabited after death of its creator.

14. Thank you Kat!
I won't know if the examiner appreciated it or not, answer key surely didn't. Anyway I knew what's coming from it.

15. Yeah. It just seems to tell you: see, these are rules, you just follow them. Don't do anything else.

16. Exactly. Schools are designed to produce ant-alike troops. Executing rules blindly is rewarded the most. Like in a majority of jobs.

17. Your story is so depressing. Usually people encourage you to make it longer and more detailed. But they wanted your story to be shorter and less detailed. Also, have you ever heard of the Jane Schaffer paragraph?

18. I didn't hear about this but I can see on wiki these are paragraph standards. Thanks Dragon but these 5 points were just 5%, so in the end it didn't matter.

19. I'm not sure about the "Schools are designed to produce ant-alike troops". Because as far as I saw through my education, for the first 6 grades you're all soldier, following what the teacher says but from 7th grade onwards people get more and more rebellious. In my class (7-8), though, mob mentality became the norm. You either went with everyone jumping off a bloody bridge or you stood against the flow and got socially excluded.

So I guess schools are broken in doing what they were supposed to do, too, huh.

20. Making people (whole generations or their parts) too individual could be a danger for countries. Schools are producing working soldiers for the country's good. If students rebel about this, they won't achieve anything and honestly not knowing real alternatives they do it to keep make-believe, to look cooler (litter? hmm). All they achieve from this are worse grades :-P No matter what you do, you end up learning in schools what needs to be learnt and (most of the time) only little of what you really want. You want learn something else? If you're lucky enough you can find extra classes, school circles and clubs. Otherwise, do it completely on your own. An alternative concept, f.e. presented by Stephen Fry in QI just wouldn't work in the greater picture. Especially for some young people, who let to their own choices would waste their potential.

And what you said about the mob mentality - I remember the same thing in my highschool. We were doing crazy stuff (some idiots rude) but it’s not what I meant. This parading and chaos making isn’t aimed at curriculum. But of course some of that could be venting frustrations from dissatisfaction about school. Very often I’ve heard complains about the system, but you just couldn’t change anything with that. Only better teachers would let you be more creative on lessons if that’s possible.

I mean, I could argue that if it was explicitly mentioned (in a matura exam, no less (schools don't joke with those )) that 275 words are the limit and you overshot by not just a few words, but 18%, you deserved the small penalty. Then again I would object to such a definite and oddly specific limit to begin with. Arguably, if you write too long of a story, you penalize yourself with less time to reexamine everything before giving it in.

The thing is likely that it was a matura exam, not dependent of a single teacher's decisions but 'harmonized' for the entire school, or probably even all schools in the region/country. I'm pretty sure such things are influenced by political decisions and budgetary restrictions, too. That might explain the very strict and formal framing.

1. Matura works that every exam takes place in every school at the same moment. The real limit is 200 – 250, tolerance +/-25, so yeah I really overshoot it with 325. Even for 300 it’s 0 composition pts. I shouldn’t choose a story, there was also a boring, but easier formal letter (with phrases learnt by heart on *fascinating* lessons). About this frame all we were told is that:
1) Max limits were set to even the chances for everyone and as you said to help students with time management. Also the longer we write, the more points we might lose for mistakes, because there are flat ranges.
2) For crossing limit that’s -5 points for composition, which aspect, by the way, for a story was max points if only there was a consistent plot.
Nevertheless, what you said explains the other side of this problem: exam budgeting. Standardized time of an exam? Minimum time is enough for students + even better set % ranges for various criteria and it seems 100% fair. But the time that examinants will spend on assessing also has to be standardized, also has to fit in frames. With a well averaged exam length (there might be some unreadable individuals :-P) it’s easy to set worktime norm.

May as well post another 1 because I saw a mistake:

Standardized time of an exam? Minimum words requirement is enough for students

Why is this so dead? If anyone feels obliged to either join discussion, or not post at all then, well, let's just limit discussions. I didn't say it clearly - I basically agreed with my interlocutors (excluding the part that rebelling is basically the effect of juvenescence and not really a mutiny against system... Also forgot to answer to Kat: teachers should guide and not require obedience. The curriculum and statute is what everyone in schools (incl. teachers) obey... *a hammer hits his face* Ofay, ofay, I'm done!

3. I turned off updates years ago so I could play some video games. I almost never looked back. Anyways, they just sound like a nuisance.

4. You can also set manual download to prevent problems with Internet speed in the least suiting moments. On freshly installed Windows updates are a disaster. Now Windows 10 has them like once every 3 months and usually small.