Word: exam
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This is not really an unexpected result, if only because most of the variations used at Harvard require considerably more work than studying for a regular exam. The fact that examinations take less work is not, however, the sort of thing one writes on a questionnaire. Other arguments justifying the present system appeared more often, and though they were perhaps no less unexpected than the overall result of the poll, they were a bit more disheartening. The written final, for example, was often defended primarily on the grounds that it prevents cheating. And an examination system with this...
Ideally, an exam should teach as well as test. A professor must unroll a course week by week during the term, and there is not always time to point out all the relationships between topics covered several months apart. The problem is especially acute at Harvard, where many students do not attend all their lectures and therefore tend to miss the lecturer's efforts to fit individual works from the reading list into some over-all pattern. A skillfully devised examination question, however, can lead the student to assemble materials from all the different parts of a course while constructing...
...theory of the ideal examination seems to bear little relation to the realities of examination practice. In answering the questionnaire, not more than half a dozen students mentioned the teaching function of exams. Most of the students favoring the present system emphasized benefits arising from reading-period preparation, rather than the actual process of examination writing. Some felt that without the threat of an examination, they would never have completed the reading list. For others, last-minute studying helped draw together the various materials covered during the term. Those pursuing the second line of reasoning rarely mentioned that the experience...
...keepers are not intimate. Andover is no place for teacher's pets. A "man" stands alone on his marks and muscles. All year the juniors (first-year boys) toil at attaining "silver" standards in physical tests, including a "drownproofing" course (copied by the Peace Corps) with a rugged exam-staying afloat for 35 minutes with hands tied behind back. The pride a boy feels when he succeeds is the fruit of Andover's unofficial motto: "Sink or swim...
...easy to demand new Faculty legislation on exams, or a mellifluously-written policy statement damning the multiple-choice questionnaire, the written final, and everything else except such ideals as the oral exam. Such a demand, of course, makes little sense in terms of the practical business of running a university. The objectives it desires bear little relation to those of the Committee, which is quite clearly more concerned with getting them to force policy onto their neighbors. The CEP should take every necessary step to insure that the results of its investigations are distributed and discussed as widely as possible...