Examination System Defended

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32114, 9 October 1969, Page 14

Examination System Defended

(Specially written for "The Press" by V. F. WILKINSON) The recent attacks on the examination system as a means of assessing achievement have reached the proportions or a band-waggon on to which all good educationalists are expected tv climb. The executive of the Post Primary Teachers’ Association has, surprisingly, joined in the chorus of denunciation of a system which now seems to have nothing to recommend it.

The New Zealand education system, despite some faults, has been as good as, or even better than, any in the world and the sudden discovery that it put up for so many years with a method of testing, that, according to the latest theories, is so inefficient and stupid, does not indicate any cool, objective thinking about its worth —unless perhaps the antiexamination experts are right, and we have been really backward in allowing it.

The following are the main arguments brought forward by the abolitionists. First, that examinations test facts and not thinking. This is astonishing, especially coming from people who presumably have passed a number of examinations in their career. Granted that the newer objective-testing type of examination, which curiously is all the rage at the moment, does this, the older type of essay question, if well set, did far more than that It demanded in an answer a marshalling of thoughts and their presentation in a convincing way. If this type of question does not require hard thought to answer. I do not know what does. To know where to go for Information may be important, but this is not enough. Pupils who copy information out of an encyclopaedia word for word are not being trained to think for themselves. If they know they are going to be tested on the material, they will select and learn the essential facts, and then present them logically, with deductive reasoning, and be truly creative —and this is what the best type of examination achieves. Imperfect Method Another argument is that examinations are imperfect methods of predicting a pupil’s later success or failures in life (though we might even hear someone ask at this stage, “What do you mean by ‘success’?”). This is not at all a new discovery —teachers have been aware of this for years. Why, then, has nothing been done about it? The reason is that examinations are like the law. We know that our legal system has many imperfections—sometimes the guiltless are condemned and vice versa; some offences seem to carry penalties out of proportion to the crime and so on. The only thing is that no-one has been able to devise a better. The same applies to examinations. We know that some pupils may get nerves at examination times and not do themselves justice, but if the ordeal of an examination is the worst thing that is going to happen to them in their life time, they will be very lucky. Some may be interviewed for jobs and make a bad impression, while others, expert self-salesmen, are appointed to positions they are incapable of filling satisfactorily. It has also been claimed that some means of assessing moral worth is important, and that examinations fail to do this—as, of course, they do. But. who can? Only one man has been able to do this perfectly, and teachers are not up to His standard. How many of our respected citizens would like the peccadilloes of their youth noted down tn a kind of educational dossier? What sort of school record would he possessed by a boy who lazes his way through school, rebels against discipline, is always in trouble and then emerges tn later years a Churchill? Suspect Tests I will agree that a pupil’s general industry and work habits should be taken into account when he is assessed for his year’s work, hut even that cannot be a reliable guide to his future. We all know the pupil who has worked beyond his capacity for two or three years and

then gives up; or the late maturer who suddenly starts to produce his best work comparatively late in his educational career. Sometimes the educationalists produce evidence of tests —often carried out in a different country with different social and educational backgrounds from our own—that seem to prove their points that examinations are inefficient. Sociological tests are always suspect. The only really reliable ones would be recently carried out in New Zealand with identical twin pupils in identical schools taught by Identical twin teachers, on the lines of calf experiments at Ruakura. It is also claimed that teachers would be freed from educational shackles if examinations were abolished—but free to teach what? Educational curricula would soon become a shambles if teachers did not have some lighthouse to steer by. Apparently district assessors would be appointed to keep teachers in line—a “gauleiter” system that scarcely seems to fit tn with new ideas of “freedom.” This happened when proficiency was abolished, when all that was required was greater liberalisation. Teachers indulged in an orgy of self-expression in teaching methods, and it has been only in the last few years that primary and intermedi-

ate schools have got back on

to an even keel. The trouble is that if teachers are given too much freedom they, being only t human, tend to teach the j things that have some glam- s our, instead of the hard basic 5 facts that are fundamental < to any system of education. I am referring to the three £ “r’s”. etc. Too many things t are taught in educational j schools that should properly < be left to the school of, experience. Unfortunately t the school of experience does ( not teach the three “r’s.” t Actually, the call to abol- { ish examinations comes at an inopportune time when the < single pass has been insti- 1 tuted in School Certificate f and the new Sixth Form j Certificate introduced. Let t us give these a good trial before rushing into uncharted j waters. j No examination system is ( perfect, but, instead of abol- ] ishing it altogether, let us t try to modify it. After all 1 is said, examinations are a ( goal, a peak, a challenge to ’ pupils to reach a standard 1 of attainment at a specified j time. All we need is a rea- s sonably wide choice of subjects, with broad curricula I for the non-academic and a ( somewhat narrower syllabus ( for those aiming at univer- s sity studies; and, above all, ; experienced setters and 1 markers. ;