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Commentary
Tests assess memorization skills
By Kristen Kubisiak
Published:
Monday, February 17, 2003
Kristen Kubisiak -- Staff Essay
Last week Tuesday is one day I would like to forget.
Despite my best efforts to start each day afresh as a clean slate unmarred by the mistakes of yesterday, what happened Tuesday will leave a permanent ink stain in a grade book.
Much worse however, than the individual grade (which in life's grand scheme is inconsequential) is the message the test burned into my mind. It is a message that will outlast any of the information I was meant to obtain from this course and this is the message: Tests are not designed to assess knowledge gained or practical application of concepts learned.
Tests are instead a means through which professors can determine which students have a) photographic memories, b) the best memorization skills, or c) the most luck. The students who do not fall into these categories merely fail.
When I went into my test on Tuesday, I felt my usual mix of nervous energy and pumping adrenaline. I was not quite sure I was prepared, because it was my first test for this class, but I was excited to get the test and let all that I learned overflow onto the page.
When I got the test I was surprised and disappointed.
Out of all the material we covered in the class, about 10 percent of it was addressed on the test. What's more, the 10 percent that WAS addressed insisted I recollect minute details from readings, or cite briefly mentioned examples in great length.
I was confused.
I hardly felt this test was an assessment of what I learned. Since I began attending this class, I had been having lengthy discussions with friends about some of the topics I learned in class, I had begun applying that which I learned to other areas of my life. The class was having an impact on me and my interpretation of the world and society.
But all this test wanted me to do was regurgitate details. Not even a fair sample of details, details seeming almost random in their significance.
My concern with the content of the test, and ultimately, its impracticality as a tool of assessment moved me to converse with some of my peers who had also taken the course.
In my survey I discovered the following: all agreed this professor was particularly difficult, some were repeat students - A and B kids who had flunked out of this professor's class before -- others who happily passed with C's assured me the first test was the worst.
This is the first time, for me in my college career, that I have ever had a sincere concern with failing.
Never had I taken a course where so many of my peers failed, or received Ds, or had to take the course over in the summer. It seems to me when a majority of students fail a test the problem lie not with the students, but the professor.
Even accounting for test anxiety, a student who studies regularly should not sit down to take a test and become completely flabbergasted by the questions the test is asking.
This is not the construction of a challenging test, merely a construction of the impossible test.
How does one prepare for the impossible? I think for the next test I might try my luck with an upgraded version of Memory.
Maybe I could cut the readings down into note cards and memorize a little bit each day, like in fourth grade when I had to memorize the preamble of the constitution and a list of prepositions.
Then everything I "learn" or "memorize" from this class can just get recycled into those fragmented bits and pieces of information I can sometimes recall from grade school and high school that have no practical application in the world I live in.
After all, college isn't really about learning.
It's about paying for a grade, and students have to do whatever it takes to get the grade even if that means betraying the very principle upon which the institution was founded.
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