Elias4’s Weblog

Usually, it’s the student who fails an exam. In Italy, it’s the exams that are getting failing grades for embarrassing errors that have already cost one education official her job.

Several mistakes were found in the English, ancient Greek and Italian exams high school students must pass before graduation.

The most error-riddled test was the English exam, given to students Thursday in vocational high schools, where foreign language courses are meant to prepare pupils for jobs in tourism.

In a text about a holiday villa in Namibia, wrong subject-verb agreements, awkward phrasing and misspellings like “budges” instead of “budgets”/*<![CDATA[*/ function ArticlePhotoGallery_movePhoto(currObj,direction,destination,source){ id=currObj.id.split('#')[0]; var totalPhotos=parseInt(document.getElementById(id+”#TotalImages”).innerHTML); currPhotoPos = parseInt(document.getElementById(id+”#currImage”).value); proceed=false; if(direction ==1) { currPhotoPos++; if(currPhotoPos >totalPhotos) { proceed=false; } else { proceed=true; } if(currPhotoPos >= totalPhotos) { document.getElementById(id+”#rightButton”).className=’buttonrightend’; } else { document.getElementById(id+”#rightButton”).className=’buttonright’; } document.getElementById(id+”#leftButton”).className=’buttonleft’; } else { currPhotoPos–; if(currPhotoPos >0) { proceed=true; } if(currPhotoPos>1) { document.getElementById(id+”#leftButton”).className=’buttonleft’; } else { document.getElementById(id+”#leftButton”).className=’buttonleftend’; } document.getElementById(id+”#rightButton”).className=’buttonright’; } if(proceed) { document.getElementById(id+”#currImage”).value=currPhotoPos; AjaxXmlQuery(id,destination,source,null,null,”/rss/channel/item["+currPhotoPos+"]“); }}/*]]>*/

“I believe a waiter in Venice would use more adequate and correct English,” Sergio Perosa, an Italian expert on American and English literature, wrote in the Corriere della Sera newspaper Friday.

Italy’s new Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini vowed Friday that those responsible for the errors would be found and appropriate action taken against them.

Students and professors alike complained about a dropped word in an ancient Greek text given in high schools specializing in classical studies.

Earlier in the week, students emerging from an Italian literature exam found it amusing that a question about a poem by the Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale confused the inspiration for the work — the exam said the muse was a woman instead of a male ballet dancer.

That error cost Education Ministry official Caterina Petruzzi her job supervising the preparation of exams for Italy’s students.

Petruzzi insisted the test was correct, telling Sky TG24 TV that she received no complaints from teachers who had reviewed it before the students took the exam. She told Corriere della Sera she would get a job teaching at a private Italian university.