Whatsit Wednesday: Bookbag on a flagpole or "hanging out the flag"

The last several weeks the Netherlands has become a country of book bags. As you drive through the city you will see them: book bags hanging out on the flagpole under a flapping Dutch flag. This shows that there is a graduate at that house. Everyone is happy. And everyone can know it.

In the Netherlands when you are in your senior year of high school, you can look forward to exams at the ends of the year. Not just any exams. Not just end of year exams. These exams are for your whole school time. These state exams test if you have truly learned all that the schools say you have learned, from beginning to end. There is no cramming for the exam this year and then forgetting it. Everything you have learned will be on this test. 

After the exam, students go home and wait anxiously. They have to wait for a call from their teacher. They will be called one way or the other, but of course they hope to hear that hey have passed. There are tons of examples of students picking up the phone and listening intently to the news given before exploding in joy that they have passed or silently putting the phone down to wonder what their summer will look like. If you do not pass now, you can still re-take the exams and hope to pass the second time. 

But if the scream of joy was heard in your house, then the book bag is ready to be hung out. These leather bags are typical of what the student has been using throughout high school, biking or bussing to school every day for the last 6 years or so. And now everyone in the street can celebrate with eh graduate. Everyone knows. It is not uncommon for neighbors walking by to congratulate the family or whoever is outside at the time.