A media outlet recently tweeted about a first-class graduate of Delta State University who developed a new type of face mask with beads when she realised that people might be having difficulties with breathing through the standard face masks worn for protection against Covid-19. Obviously, there were holes in her thinking and in the face masks, however, this media outlet lauded the beaded face masks as very innovative.
As expected, this woke the comedians and professional “draggers” of Twitter from their quarantine-induced slumber. What does it say of the university if a first-class graduate could make a blunder like this? If a first-class graduate could think like this, then what should be expected from graduates with lower grades? Some people told the media outlet to take down the tweet as it was embarrassing, someone said “might as well snort the coronavirus like cocaine (than use the beaded face mask)”.
This led to the age-long debate of “Can Grades Determine A Student’s Intelligence”.
As expected, two uneven sides were created, the popular side swore that you can’t be mediocre and graduate with a first-class, the less popular side screamed with testimonies and anecdotes that a lot of first-class graduates have little common sense, they listed the names of popular brilliant people that dropped out of school. And as usual, this debate ended in a stalemate as each team abandoned it to move to newer trends in the universe of Twitter.
Personally, I think they were approaching the debate from the wrong angle, they were attacking the branches and not the root. The modern system of examination that is used to assess students is flawed.
The modern concept of examination was invented around the late 19th century by the late Henry Fischel, an American businessman. Years before that, standardised testing was used in China.
In the modern system of examinations, the teacher announces a particular date when he will test the knowledge of his students, usually at the end of the academic semester. Some teachers even give out areas of concentration from the syllabus. The students are given weeks to prepare for this exam, they read and memorise chapters from textbooks and also study collections of past exam questions. A lot of times, the students are lucky as many of these past exam questions recur.
The problem with the modern system of examination is that it mostly tests the memory and cramming skills of the students, it tests how well they can regurgitate the paragraphs, definitions and formulas they crammed from textbooks, and the best crammer often comes out on top. Only a very few actually test the students’ knowledge and personal understanding of the subject.
During the weeks of preparation for the exam, every class would be filled with students memorizing words from textbooks that they hadn’t touched for months, students even develop innovative techniques to help them cram better, some use songs and some use acronyms. The teacher is well aware of this, many of these teachers also used these techniques when they were students.
What I propose is to set up an impromptu exam instead of announcing a particular date for the exam. This will be effective in assessing what the students know and understand, and not what they memorised to forget after the exam. The modern concept of examination is inadequate if students’ study for the exam and forget everything after the exam. How many adults even remember what the Pythagoras Theorem is.
The examinations for art students are even more flawed. Unlike mathematics where 2+2 = 4 universally, art is more subjective. A certain lecturer might be a fan of a certain style of expression and this preference often influences how he assesses his students. Although, several art schools have made attempts at developing more objective exams, much still needs to be done.
People have argued for more equitable exams i.e. exams that test each student based on his strength. Develop specific questions for each student instead of testing a group of students with the same exam questions. The rationale is that the students have different interests and strength, so, the focus should be on that instead of irrelevant subjects. If a teacher notices that a student is better with technology than human biology, then, the exams should assess him based on that because if a tech-savvy student writes a biology exam and doesn’t do well, this would affect his overall grade which would be publicly used to judge his intelligence. This is a case of knotting a sock around the neck and choking the foot with a tie.
I do not think we can or should eradicate examinations, they play a necessary role in our academic institutions, but the modern system of examination needs to be reviewed to make it more efficient.
OC George
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