The start of Thanaweya Amma – or high school certificate – exams this week was a cause for worry for thousands of homes in Egypt. The editorial of the daily Al-Ahram said that the start of Thanaweya Amma exams was marked by families hoping that their children will do well after a whole year of challenges, hard work and ambitions and that each candidate will pass that decisive year and join the university of his or her dream. “Thanaweya Amma exams will, without doubt, be the most prominent event that the media will cover extensively and accurately in the coming few weeks,” the editorial said. The edit expressed hope that this year's exam will be held in a quiet atmosphere without any major mistakes or complaints from the students about the difficulty of a certain exam. It was also hopeful that the new system that started from first secondary this year will realise its aim of gradually improving the standard of education and end private lessons. Mohamed Ahmed Tantawi asked why the families of students gather in front of exam centres in which their children are taking their tests. These gatherings, Tantawi explained, create crowdedness and traffic jams, sometimes distract and create psychological pressure on the students. The writer cast light that one does not see this anywhere else in the world and that it has its negative impact on the security of the exam centres as well as causing noise that may affect the concentration of the students. “While we appreciate the concern of the parents about their children's future, they should realise that their presence in front of exam centres only increases the students' tension,” Tantawi wrote in the daily Al-Youm Al-Sabei. He hoped that parents would give up this habit that does not benefit their children in any way. The killing of 10 police officers in two simultaneous attacks on checkpoints near El-Arish last week left most Egyptians in a state of shock. Wa'el Lotfi wrote that with every new terrorist attack, we have to ask ourselves who is responsible for it, who introduced the religious discourse that people listened to during the last 50 years and whether it provided society with a good commodity that contributed to its development or a bad commodity as shown in the results of this discourse. “In the light of the outcome on the ground, frankly, we should punish those who introduced religious discourse that people have recently consumed. We have to question whether religious preachers who were introduced to us as moderate preachers, are really moderate or pretended to be so,” Lotfi wrote in the daily Al-Watan. Actually, he concluded, the truth that we live in at present impinges on us to try to answer this question and to stop and reassess the past honestly and bravely. That is, if we want a better future.
