Tawjihi literally means guidance as it guides you to your future but does nothing more than leaving you lost in real life after finishing high school. It is the high school system in Jordan, the Palestinian territories and in east Jerusalem. I personally have done it, and my experience was not the best. I received an excellent grade that is above 95%; however, this grade measured how well I can memorise the lessons, and not how well I am academically as a high school level student. For example, if someone asked me anything about the Ottoman empire, I would only remember the paragraphs about it in the history book that I have memorised by heart. What I memorised would stay in the short-term memory, and a few years later I will not even remember those paragraphs

After high school, when I engaged more with the real world, I wished my school had asked us (the students) to write analytical essays. I have not been asked to write any essays in school. All we had were books that we needed to memorise because the test questions required the students to answer exactly as it is mentioned in the book. The exams include direct questions that students can anticipate. Even in language and maths subjects, students had to memorise the book and simply write what is exactly written in the book in the tests. I remember I had to memorise a 10 line paragraph about Shakespeare and write it down in the English test. I left the test not knowing how to convey my knowledge about Shakespeare by my own words in English.

I have learned English by watching movies. I got a feeling for the language and learned some vocab, and therefore, I still need to work on my basics in English. The Tawjihi school system is unfair for the students because it does not really educate them. What is the purpose if a student memorises the lesson and forgets it after the exam. It is not the information in the books of Tawjihi that I am criticising, but the way these books are being taught. In addition, It is not enough to study what is only in the book, a student must learn how to collect information, how to analyse it, and how to write it down academically.

I have received above 95% as my grade in Tawjihi; however, when I was 18 years old, I did not know how to write an email or an essay, how to read news, and how to study. In my first semester in university, I had to write 200 words to apply a theory that I learned in class, on an example from our daily life as my first task. It was simple, but I failed. I had to think and not to memorise.