How I Passed the Baccalaureate

A silly question, some readers will say. What does your passing the baccalaureate matter to us? Is the baccalaureate the diploma of medicine, or the doctorate in law? And after all, since when has the baccalaureate been an end in itself, that students, boys and girls, should compose articles upon it and waste the readers' time on what is of no profit?

To that party of people I address this word of mine. And behind them stands a large body whose responsibility it is to listen, to grasp what it hears, and to set about reform before it is too late.

First: the baccalaureate, as it is taught in our schools, is an end in itself, for which the teachers, men and women, and the students, boys and girls, labor night and day. The former explain no subject and apply no theory unless it is on the baccalaureate program; and the latter fast and pray to obtain it, whether they profit from their lessons or not.

Second: the baccalaureate program is stuffed with subjects of which the least that can be said is that they are devoid of the elements of true culture — and there is no room here for refutation and detail.

Third: girls' schools need programs differing somewhat from those in boys' schools, and hence it was only right that girls should have a certificate that is other than the boys' certificate.

Fourth: those who preside over the correcting of the examinations are not all on one level in their understanding of the standard of the students and the standard of the baccalaureate. The very same mark for one and the same paper may differ according to the differing correctors — witness what has happened, and happens, at every examination.

Fifth: luck plays its greatest part in the baccalaureate examinations, as happened to me and to many others besides me; so it is essential that we reduce its importance.

And finally — I have not yet said how I passed the baccalaureate. I failed in last June's session, and I was not expecting that failure at all. Then I passed in the October session, when I had despaired of passing!

As for why I failed, and how I came back and passed, and how many crises of the spirit I suffered through this summer, thinking: shall I present myself for the examination a second time, or content myself with what befell me in the first shock — of that I shall tell none of the readers. But I cannot help calling down mercy upon our greatest thinker, Gibran, who kept me company for a long while during this crisis of the spirit; in the midst of such a crisis I would read his wonderful words:

"Life is an island whose rocks are longings, whose trees are dreams, whose flowers are solitude, and whose springs are the thirst for glory."

But why do I cite Gibran, when Gibran is banished from the baccalaureate program?

Or do you suppose that Gibran, were it granted him to return to life, could pass the baccalaureate? Yet I and my companions have passed...