"THE EXAM" "A CLASS CHRONICLE" "Those about whom we will report have been going to school here for ten years." "We first filmed some of them in 1 961, on their first day of school." "They came with their parents, carrying satchels and gift cones." "Now, at 1 6, they're gathering to get their final exam results." "They aren't all here today." "Some are preparing for university." "Some left after the eighth year, because their parents wanted them to." "And some had to repeat a year." "Elke and Marieluise completed the path that the school in this village of just over 1 000 souls had to offer." "Now they can make plans for future professions." "They'll be pupils for 1 4 more days, even if they find it hard and are no longer thought of as pupils." "They enter the school through the teachers' door." "The bell that governed their school days for ten years no longer gives them cause to rush." "When we met to begin these exams all was ahead of us." "You came bearing a weight that has now fallen away." "Now you have overcome a hurdle and I am very happy to tell you what you probably want to know most right now." "On behalf of the committee I want to say you were all a joy to examine." "You would agree, wouldn't you?" "You were all very nice and none of you failed the exam." "You sometimes tested us more than we tested you." "And I got to know a side of some of you" "I hadn't known before." "They have their certificates, their parents and Golzow celebrated." "Now they want to be among each other." "I don't know, it's like youth culture in general, the older generation doesn't really understand it." "We young people think it's cool." "I mean, back then the charleston was the happening thing, and today beat music is." "You just have to go with the times." "You can't say we should do things as they were done back then." "It probably wasn't any different in the old days." "1 5 minutes, which some took advantage of and others didn't." "We experienced each one of them behind this door." "At any rate they all passed." "If the school's demands match those of tomorrow, they will all pass life's tests as well." "The best scenario is if you can go in an upbeat mood and feel confident that you'II manage when your name is called." "If you go into it scared, you won't do well." "We now have a current of 2.5 volts..." "Klaus Wenzel, passed with an A. He will train to be an electrician." "Read your question." "Jutta Pahl earned a B." "She'll be a landscape architect, something she didn't know in Year 8." "Christian Struwe will be a farm mechanic." "Given time he can master any task." "Passed his final exam with a C." "How can I explain it?" "You could explain it better, but the rest was good." "Regina Bernd passed her final with an A." "She was so driven the others found it creepy." "Wanted to be a criminalist but opted for insurance sales." "So then, think it over carefully, set up a good basis..." "Bernhard Guderjahn passed his exam with a C." "He settled on joining his friends as a mechanic at the cooperative farm." "Read the question." "Ilona Grosskreutz passed with a C." "School was never easy for her, but she refused to drop out." "Now she can go to Frankfurt Oder to train as an electronics specialist." "Well, the teacher has been teaching a pupil for ten years and he now wants to see what that pupil actually learned." "And he can assess how good he's done over the years." "Sometimes that can be a real slap in the face." "At 1 6 you know the teachers are being tested in these 1 5 minutes too." "They don't want to be too hard on them." "If we meet expectations they're glad, otherwise they're disappointed." "They think, "ln class he's like that, hopefully he has a good day. "" "And if you don't do well they think they wasted their time." "You've embarrassed yourself immensely, yourself and your teacher." "Then if you put some magnesium into the test tube..." "What observation can you make?" "That the magnesium and acetic acid react with one another." "To confirm the presence of hydrogen I will now ignite the gases." "This is the so-caIIed squeaky pop test." "If I do a nice experiment and it works out for me and I understand how it all works, I really enjoy it." "But you have to revise for it at home." "Like for this exam, I couldn't have done it off the cuff." "No, to the semi-conductor factory in Frankfurt." "You can make good use of it there." "Yes." "useful, doing it again." "Nice?" "Doing what again, the exam?" "No, I mean all the revision." "Preparing for it?" "Yes." "That's why I tested you on it, you had nearly earned a B as it was." "Marieluise says her teacher made chemistry enjoyable and prepared her to work as a lab technician." "Now then, ilona should be next." "IIona, please take a seat first." "Take a deep breath and then begin." "X squared is equal to PX." "X squared is equal to PX." "Minus Q." "plus Q." "Minus Q." "Wait, I have plus Q here." "Me too." "No, minus Q." "It's written there." "The girls are more studious." "When you see how they prepare, they always have their notes out." "They revise for weeks." "The boys don't do that." "Boys hardly ever revise that hard." "If you haven't got it after ten years, you never will." "V equals 3. 1 4 divided by three..." "I can't do it." "I want to, but I can't." "Despite practising at home when we get homework." "The height is 15.5 and..." "Or when we get homework and the sum doesn't turn out right," "I persevere until I've done it." "But with my mum in hospital, I just couldn't improve." "I had so much to do at home that there was no way I couId manage." "It has to be divided by two." "Show us the height of the cylinder." "Here." "And the total height of the pin?" "15.5." "Okay, ilona." "And what's left over for the frustum?" "Show us the height again, ilona." "Show the height of the frustum." "From here to here." "Now look at what is written at the edge of it." "How do you feel you've done, ilona?" "I was too muddled." "What's the problem, dear?" "Come now." "It wasn't that bad." "Come back over here, ilona." "Wash the board clean first." "Is it that bad?" "well then, go ahead and leave." "But don't cry out there, or the others will get worried." "IIona Grosskreutz." "What mark do you have for her?" "4.4." "well, in that case it's still a D." "Yes, it's still a D." "She came out and was crying, but she has her mark based on her performance over the years." "So she cried, let's not make a big deal." "I mean, you can console her to make her feel better." "But giving someone a different mark just because they cried, I just disagree with that." "Dieter Mokros can't fathom maths being hard." "Admiration for a boy who sees things in terms of principles and causalities and for whom only looks from girls are a mystery." "...cut a regular pentagon from this sheet of steel." "A:" "calculate the side length," "B:" "calculate the percentage of surface area lost in the milling." "Then I can get started, can I?" "please do." "In school they talk about Edith and Wilfried a lot, but not much about the fact that they revise together." "So the answer is 24.7 percent." "Correct." "Any other questions?" "No." "That'II do." "How do you feel you've done, Dieter?" "I don't know." "well?" "It was easy." "What?" "It was easy." "We can find a harder one." "Fine by me." "We can do that." "You did very well." "You can be happy with yourself." "Thank you, erase the board please." "Erase it." "The trigonometry, surface area calculation." "Right through to the end." "And thus the percentage calculation." "He completed that successfully too." "So he confirmed his B in the exam." "So, my task is to calculate the weight of a 1 .5 metre long steel pipe with an external diameter of 22 millimetres and a sheet thickness of 1 .5 millimetres." "I'II start by drawing a sketch of it on the board." "They can be pretty and wear miniskirts or not so pretty and wear trousers." "They don't mark them on their looks, but on what they know." "At least here, I don't know how it is in West Germany." "IV equals..." "Bringing the different parts..." "It involves trigonometry and all the rest." "Less than a metre." "Centimetres, yes..." "That's the right idea." "A metre..." "Between a metre and a centimetre?" "Edith, these are linear measures." "A decimetre." "We all know how it is to draw a blank." "Certainly the result of deficits in maths throughout the years." "She mucked up the maths exam so badly that her chances of getting a final mark of B are slim." "I think she's pretty close to getting an A in all her other subjects." "She's quite good in German, history and social studies." "She's good in pretty much every subject, just not maths." "You're young and have plans." "Now go ahead and tell us, us greying old men here before you, who were once young too and saw the world much differently." "Go ahead and tell us how you plan to succeed in life, as a joint-owner of production works, as someone who co-determines the path of the GDR?" "That's hard to say." "By being totally committed to my state, in every situation." "And, well, us lads will go into the army one day where you can show your commitment." "You can do it by excelling in training..." "What do you mean by "you"?" "I'II join the army afterwards and there I can show how committed I am to my state by excelling in my training." "I would stand up for the GDR come what may." "Because I grew up here, I was raised here." "And" "I spent my youth here and it's my homeland." "Why should I let others... badmouth my country?" "It's my homeland and I'II defend it with any means necessary." "I was just happy to be out of there." "They said I couId've said this or that for a better result." "I got annoyed with myself at that, as one does." "Hans-Jürgen doesn't like to go on about the obvious." "And that's how they all are." "It is hard to examine someone's attitude." "Life will do that." "actually, looking back at it, it wasn't all that bad, and now it's over." "Sometimes you don't seize the chances you had when they were there." "The last two, three years raced by." "You had to wonder where they had gone." "well, I think I couId've done more." "I couId've worked harder." "Copyright © 2010 TITELBILD, berlin subtitles:" "Nathan Fritz et aI."