On average students are expected to be 18 years of age either finishing their matric year or going into it. Yet when a much slower student that stays in school a bit longer to achieve the honour of being dubbed able with the oh so infamous piece of paper called a matric certificate, they are looked down upon and are told that they need to go, they are told that they are too old and need to make space for others, by the very same people who told them that they absolutely have to get a simple piece of paper. Education should be limitless. Frequently Matric Certificates are exploited to a larger degree in societal standardisation and in home environments and even in the very high school spaces that claim there should be an age limit for the students that should still be attending high school.
The very notion of restricting high school students to a certain age is extremely purposeless if such a large quantity of the population states that a matric certificate is of such great importance. There wouldn’t be as much pressure on comparatively slower students to stay in high school for many more years, so as to feel accepted in societal degrees, if there wasn’t such a buzz with regards to matric being a step in the right direction.
The only direction one is told to take. Students that drop out of high schools are looked down upon even though most of the time these people know that high school is not something they will be able to get through. Now those that stay an extra amount of time to at least attempt to achieve something in this system are looked down upon as well. On a daily basis, particularly in places like South Africa, children in high schools are exposed to commentary concerning how “awfully they will live in the future if they don’t pull up their socks”.
Many people, teachers and even guardians tell these students that the only jobs they will be able to obtain with their supposed “bad and lazy attitudes” are those of being “Shoprite package assistants” or petrol station attendants. These overaged pupils are exposed to people all around them speaking on how easy high school is supposed to be or rather how important is it for one to achieve such in order to be dubbed worthy and smart enough to make it to yet another few years in tertiary institutions.
Much more in this age than before 2000, senior citizens have come back to finishing schools to complete their matric. In fact these elderly citizens are seen as wonderful and should be praised, however, they are over aged too. This is why the proposal of trying to restrict students to a certain age, a particular box of hurried or fast paced consumption of information, is so preposterous. As the saying goes, “time does not wait for anyone,” so why are students blinded and misguided with the illusion that they should take their own time. Although they are made to believe the schooling system is for all of them, later on are told that they only have half a year to compress about 2 years worth of work effectively into their minds. So it can be observed that the schooling system is indeed not for all, especially not for those that struggle with it and have to stay extra years in it.
Indeed there needs to be limits to things, though education and a proper schooling should definitely not be one of those things, especially not to those slower people that are really eager to learn. If the rate at which overaged students was such a problem then the problem of rushing students into completing such large portions of work would also be solved.