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The Eleven Plus Exam: Recollections

At school, particularly when I was ten or eleven, I was suffocated by the amount of normality I was subjected to. I knew how to count, and yet they, the teachers, pushed all these complex forms of mathematics down my throat. I could read, but I wasn’t allowed to read what I wanted. I was force-fed the school syllabus, and all because it was deemed to be the standard. And someone had decided that children should be judged at the age of eleven so that they could be segregated for the rest of their lives.

No consideration was given for talents outside the limited range required by the examining board. The misfits were destined to become factory fodder, farm workers or manual workers like my father, with no incentive to achieve or realize their potential.

I sat at my desk on the day of the Eleven Plus exam and looked at my paper. I felt it was more than my intelligence that was being tested, it was my whole being. I had to decide either to play the game their way, and succeed or fail according to their rules, or take my own route. I decided to settle my own fate signed my name at the top of the paper, and did nothing more for the rest of the exam. The room was silent, apart from the anxious scratching of pencils, and yet inside my head was a triumphant explosion, like the opening cannon shot of war. I had made my first statement to the world. But it was also like watching opportunity float away on a piece of paper down the river. It would damage me, but at the same time it was a victory. For the first time in my life I realized that it would be a battle between me and them.

1.The writer implies in the first paragraph that his school days were characterized by

A a system which benefited none of the pupils at his school.

B his belief that he would not end up in the same sort of job his father had.

C his belief that he had abilities that the school system did not cater for.

D a refusal on his part to do what teachers expected of him.

2.When the writer decided not to answer any of the questions in the exam, he

A was fully aware of the consequences of what he was doing.

B did so because he feared that the exam would suggest he was not very intelligent.

C told himself that doing so would not have long-term consequences.

Dthought it was the logical thing to do in view of his behaviour at school.

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