Word: grader
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...often gets the feeling that taking examinations is like playing slot machines: you toss in your hard-earned studies, the grader's mind goes round and round, and, suddenly lo and behold! up pops a grade--often far different from the one you felt you'd won when you took the test. (In justice, it would be said that teachers probably feel the same way about students: they toss in their hard-won knowledge, our minds go round and round...
...problem is essentially one of lack of communication between grader and graded. The grader cannot help tending to regard his task as a dreary, repetitious chore, enlivened only by an occasional witty or brilliant examination, and by the opportunity to discuss the answers with his colleagues. The student can't help regarding his grader as a mysterious nonentity who lurks in the corners during lectures and whose mental processes are utterly incomprehensible except for occasional rumor: "easy," "a bastard," etc. Most graders lack the time to comment on exams, and some courses even refuse to return them on request...
...person does not apply to an entire industry. The undergraduate taking final exams is subject to this fallacy. He has spent an entire term studying a course, has arrived at his own ideas, and to him, the three hours spent in examinations are vitally important. But his grader, faced with 100 blue books, sees the exam as just one unit in a mass production...
...undergraduate who grades an upper level math course feels that his experience as a grader lets him understand what his section men experience. "If they read my exams early, they'll be fresh, and read carefully; if they read it after a hundred others, they'll be bleary-eyed and careless...
Unfortunately, the grader is not a machine and his standards do vary from bluebook to bluebook--but that is not the most serious problem. Graders rarely have time to comment on final exams and rarely have a chance to talk personally with students. If education is defined as a dialogue between teacher and student, it's hard to see where Harvard's final exams...