EXAMINATIONS AND COURSES

The futility of written examinations after a full year's work in any course is evident to no one more than to the student suffering from a hard three-hour grind in New Lecture Hall. Three hours at the end of a year and proceeded by an abbreviated period of the most intensive cramming is unfair to the undergraduate, perhaps ungifted with a glib pen, who has worked steadily throughout the year and can be said to possess a comprehensive and appreciative knowledge of his subject. The final examination is, too, a boon to the man who makes a desperate last minute effort, attended by a visit to the tutoring schools, to cover the work sufficiently for a passing mark. It is too easily done.

The answer is not to be found in the petty and irritating hour examinations which have a tendency to clutter up the already too-complicated mechanics of so many advanced courses, and which in any analysis, emphasize the value of the course as a unit at the expense of the knowledge gleaned from the course. The whole fabrication of American education is built on the fallacy of the written examination as a safe and sound criterion of ability. Even the most conscientious assistant will admit that the phenomenon of decreasing returns applies to correcting test papers. The section man is mentally alert to judge the first paper with the best of his critical ability; by the twentieth his senses are dulled and there is little correlation with any of the other papers he has marked. The tendency to judge carefully each succeeding bluebook decreases.

President Lowell has only recently deprecated the prevailing system of establishing the course as the unit of education instead of the student. Perhaps the two steps farther from this tendency are the tutorial system and the Divisional examinations. Both tend to minimize the value of the course as a yardstick, and in both may be the answer to intelligent ranking of a student's ability. To make the Divisional examination an oral one, and the only one of the four years is seemingly too idealistic. It implies a faith in the student to appreciate fully his ultimate aim in education which at the present time is admittedly too visionary a premise. It implies the none that culture instead of crammed of edits will be the product of the American college.

The step, if it is over taken, must be the antithesis of revolution. It involves placing more power in the hands of the tutor who would be, and actually is now, the only competent authority on what knowledge the student assimilates during the years before the four year-oral examination. It means inculcating into the undergraduate the realization that he is the only one profiting or losing, that he is pursuing culture rather than sixteen credits. Finally, it does offer him a fairer opportunity and a more comprehensive test to display his qualities to the examining board. It involves the departure of the written examinations and the course as an end instead of a means; it offers education instead of mechanical sheepskins.