The High School Boy and His Problems/Examinations and Grades
Most students in high school quite seriously believe that examinations have been devised by teachers merely to torture a group of defenseless young people. They see in examinations neither pleasure nor benefit, they look forward to their approach with premonition and pain, and give a relieved sigh when each series of examinations is safely past.
"The teacher knows what a fellow will do before he takes an examination," the high school boy argues, "so why can't he let it go at that and give a man a grade without working him to a shadow or scaring him to death in getting ready for an examination?"
When I was in college we had a shrewd old instructor, lazy we thought him at times, whom we could never quite make out. His grades were always in the college office within a surprisingly short time after the examination had ceased, so that there was a suspicion in the minds of a good many of us that he never read his examination papers at all, but dumped them into the waste paper basket and went home to enjoy his cigar.
The trouble was that no one quite liked to take the risk to prove his suspicion. We threatened often to test out our theories by not studying for the quiz and by writing down any sort of bunk that came into our heads when we got into the classroom, but these threats seldom got further than talk. Fred Waterman tried it once and flunked the course, whether because the old man read the paper and discovered Fred's trick, or because he had already scheduled Fred for defeat, we could never quite determine. As it was the majority of us went on boning up for the examination and sweating through it, fearful that after all that the instructor might read the papers. I always meant to ask him after I got out of college whether he did or not, but I could never quite get up my nerve. I can see now that whether he read them or not made very little difference. He was a good judge of human nature. He knew us well enough so as seldom to do us any especial intellectual injustice, and he kept—us guessing so that we had to make the review and the preparation that he wanted us to make.
The boy is right who says that the teacher generally knows pretty well beforehand what his students are worth and what they will know on an examination. The teacher is just as sure, however, if heis any judge of human nature, that it is the getting ready for the examination and the actually taking of it that makes the boy sure of what he knows. If he knew that he did not have to take an examination the boy would seldom make any special mental effort. Our old high school trainer used to know pretty well what Jim Whalen would do in the race for which he was practicing, though Jim seldom made any remarkable showing before the time of actual contest. It was the thought of the race itself that put nerve into Jim. It was the contact with the other fellows and the stimulus of competition that urged him on and made him win. Jim would never have been much of a runner unless he had been put into a race, and no one knew the fact better than the trainer. It is the same way with a boy in examinations.
A good many schools follow the practice of excusing from final examinations all students whose daily work averages above a certain grade. I know a good many high school boys who have never taken a final examination and who would not know how to do so creditably. It is a perfectly easy matter, if he is alert while in the classroom and regular in his class attendance, for a boy to keep his daily grades up and still to have very little general grasp of the subject. I have just answered a letter from the father of one of our freshmen in college. The boy has been dropped at the end of his first year for poor scholarship, and the father finds it difficult to understand why.
"George was always a good student in the high school," he wrote. "He never had to take an examination, and I can not see why he had done so badly in college."
In college George was required in his final examination to present a general view of the whole subject-matter covered in his course; he found it necessary to systematize his knowledge and to present his facts in an orderly fashion, and he had had no previous practice in doing this sort of thing. It was quite easy to see why he had failed. He was working under a new system, and he had not adjusted himself to it.
I have seldom seen a boy who was so smart in high school that he was excused from all his examinations who, without unusual effort, was able to do well in college. Such boys have a good many facts, possibly, in their possession, but when they want to use them, they don't know where they are. They have been mislaid or so jumbled up with other things that it is impossible to disentangle them. Knowledge is of little use to any one unless it is available. I have all sorts of tools about the house, but if when I want to drive a nail I discover that the hammer is gone, and I am forced to use a flat iron, of what service to me is the hammer? A boy may have innumerable items of information somewhere about his brain, but if when he finds a use for facts it is impossible for him to organize or to recall them, he is about as well off as if he did not have them at all.
The best possible use of an examination is that it necessitates an organization of knowledge. A boy must get his facts into some sort of order if he is to do his best in a limited time. He must have what he has learned laid out before his mental vision so that he can put his hands on it readily if it is called for. I am often an onlooker at surgical operations. Nothing in this sort of experience interests me more than the preparations which are always made before the actual work of the operation begins. There is the movable tray standing ready by the operating table with its array of instruments all laid out in the most careful order. There are sponges, and needles, and all sorts of thread, and detractors, and forceps all in their places, and so arranged that whatever may be needed in the emergency that is likely to occur will be ready for use. It is some such preparation as this that a boy should make who is getting ready for an examination. He does not know what is going to be called for, but if he has his information in logical order he is ready for any call.
An examination, or at least the preparation which any sensible boy will make in getting ready for an examination, is an excellent training in judgment. The boy, as he goes over the material he has studied, must determine what is fundamental, what is important, and what without danger may be discarded. This requires thought, discrimination, and care. It is not so difficult to pick out each day the important facts of a lesson as it is at the close of a year's or a half year's study to select what one should carry with him from the mass of facts that has been considered. Knowing that he will be required to do this, a boy will study with a very different purpose than he would show if he were convinced that when a day's lesson is learned, he is through with it for all time.
Examinations are meant to test a student's resourcefulness, his ability to meet a-new situation, to assemble facts in a different way than he had been accustomed to do, and from them to draw new conclusions.
"I never heard of some of the things the teacher asked us today," one of my neighbor boys announced following a final examination. "I'm sure a lot of the answers were not in the book."
It always seems an injustice to a boy to be asked on an examination anything the answer to which can not easily be found by turning to the book. But really the best sort of question to ask is the one that requires the searching of a boy's brain rather than the book before he finds the proper answer. Nobody in real life ever finds a problem presented just as it is in the book, but, if he has learned to analyze and to organize his knowledge, the one in the book helps him to the solution of the one in real life. The lawyer seldom if ever finds the series of circumstances surrounding his first important case like any particular illustration he has studied; the surgeon taking out his first appendix can seldom put his finger on the disturbing organ at the point where the books say it ought to be. It is the thing that isn't in the book that we are always running up against in practical life, and it is a very good experience to get used to in the examinations taken in school.
The greatest howl which is set up by the high school boys I know against examinations is caused by the so-called "catch-questions" which are frequently introduced into examinations, and by the fact that examinations are frequently sprung upon an unsuspecting and unprepared class without announcement.
"If he had only told us ahead of time that we were going to have the quiz," the boy protests, "it wouldn't have been so bad; but there we were absolutely unprepared. It wasn't fair."
Here again there is something to be said on the other side. It is the purpose of an examination just as much to discover what a boy does not know as it is to find out the facts he is acquainted with. It is very helpful to a teacher at times as well as to his students to stumble upon the weak places in his teaching and in their knowledge. The "catch question" often tests the alert mind. All through life a boy will find that there is likely to be some one lying in wait to catch him by a trick or a technicality. He might as well get used early in life to recognizing these situations and meeting them. If only the expected happened, the world would be a very much easier place in which to live than it now is. I try to figure out each morning as I go to my office what form of student irregularity I shall during the day have to adjust, but I am never successful. No two days are alike; every problem which is presented has something in it unforeseen and unlike anything else which I have ever met. If we knew when we were going to die we should be upset considerably, no doubt, but I am not at all sure that we should meet the grim destroyer with any more composure than we shall when he comes upon us unannounced. It is the way most experiences of life come, so why not examinations?
The hard examination is frequently objected to on the ground that it is not a fair test of a student's knowledge. It is a good thing for every boy, however, occasionally to give his brain a stiff work out. Qur real physical and intellectual strength is tested not so much by what we can accomplish as we loaf along lazily through life, as by what we can do when we are pushed into a corner and forced to work or to think our hardest. The boys who came through the horrors of the Argonne or of Belleau Wood never suspected what they could stand until put to the test, and their changed point of view reveals the fact that they were strengthened by the test. One young boy I know got three meals out of eleven and was without sleep for three days, and I suppose he had an easy time as compared with what other boys suffered. Of course, if a "boy lies down and refuses to do his best when he comes up "against a hard mental test, the advantage to himof such an experience is nullified.
An examination is a good game, if a boy will think of it so, a game which it is possible to learn to play skilfully. He must first of all keep his head if he is going to make a good score. He should go into the game in good condition and with good spirits. I know many fellows who get ready for an examination by studying far into the night or all night, trying in a few hours to cram into their brains all sorts of miscellaneous information. They get little sleep, and they go to their examination stupid and irritable and in no condition to meet either the unexpected or the difficult. One of the best preparations for a stiff examination is a good night's sleep and a cold shower on rising. An intelligent review of the ground covered every one ought to take, but he should not try to do this at one sitting at the expense of his regular hours for sleep. This review is purely a matter of judgment to determine what is essential and what is not. It is the steady, regular, daily work that gets a fellow into condition for an examination more than the feverish cramming the night before the test comes.
Next to a rested body, a calm mind and a reasonable self-confidence are most helpful in passing a good examination, and these states of mind are much more fully within a boy's personal control than we are sometimes willing to admit. Worry and fear and lack of faith in our own ability to do a task well we largely induce in ourselves, or eliminate from our minds as the case may be. Self-control is a good deal a matter of will, and the boy who is getting ready to take an examination can exercise it very much to his advantage. Whenever a player in any game allows himself to get "rattled," then his game goes to pieces.
One should go at an examination in an orderly fashion. If you will watch a good whist player you will see that he arranges his cards carefully before he leads so that he can determine easily what the strength of his hand is. He tackles first the thing that he is sure of. So a boy going into an examination should get a grasp of the whole situation before he begins his solution. He should read the entire examination paper before he begins to write, and should take stock of the requirements and of his assets. He should adjust his time to the length of the task before him. I have seen a good many boys fail an examination because having met something difficult at the outset, they gave most of their available time to the solution of this problem and had no time left for the remainder of the examination which they might have found relatively simple.
The best way from my experience to "hit an examination hard" is to answer first and as rapidly as possible all the questions the answers to which seem easy or obvious. This is quite possible, since students are seldom if ever required to write their answers in any definite order. By safely and quickly disposing of a reasonable share of the examination, the boy gains confidence, he realizes that he is probably doing fairly well, and he can divide the remainder of his time between the questions that seem to him to require more thought and care. His very satisfied state of mind will help clear his brain and steady his nerves for the doing of the task that is more difficult.
During all this time he ought to be giving some attention to the order and form of his answers. A neatly written, orderly arranged examination paper, other things being equal, will draw a higher grade by several per cent than another one which may contain the same information badly put together. We are all unconsciously attracted by the shop whose windows display a tasteful and orderly arrangement of wares. Any jumble annoys us even if it be a jumble of things otherwise pleasing and attractive. Arrange your answers, therefore, so that they look well. If possible put them down so that the instructor can readily grasp what you are trying to say, and will not have to waste his time and his patience in digging out your reasoning. Number or letter the subdivisions of your answers if necessary. Write legibly. I have thrown aside many an examination paper disgusted because it was almost impossible to determine the identity of the written words. Don't crowd your material; paper is of less value than your instructor's eyesight or peace of mind. The very fact that you seem trying to make what you say clear and easy of comprehension predisposes the instructor in your favor.
It sometimes pays to guess, if one is not certain of his facts. Of course, it is a weak player who is always uncertain, and a weak boy who hasn't some things definitely in mind. But on occasion it is best to take a chance, and if you are wrong to take the consequences. Even the best of us has to bluff once in a while, and just so one doesn't get the reputation for regularly doing it, no harm is likely to be done. It is better to be struck out trying to hit the ball than it is to be sent back to the bench never having swung the bat.
I have spoken of examinations as a game. I should like to have every boy feel that it is an honest game, an honorable gentleman's game, which he must play squarely, depending upon his own skill and his own knowledge to carry him through.
"But I had to pass," a boy said to me once in justification of the fact that he had been caught cribbing.
He was entirely mistaken. Nobody has to pass, and nobody should pass unless he does so honestly. The boy who gains his grades through cribbing, is little better than a common thief. There are a thousand forms and methods of getting help illegitimately in an examination, from cribbing from your neighbor's paper to bringing books and elaborately disguised "ponies" to class, but no one who cares for honesty and for his reputation will have anything to do with any of these. In truth they seldom help a great deal. I am convinced that it could be shown, if the proper investigation were made, that the cribber loses on the whole more than he gains not only in self-reliance and strength of character but in the accuracy of the information which he puts down, which would be more dependable if he relied upon his own brains. There is the greatest satisfaction always in feeling after an examination that one has done a good piece of work. There is the greatest satisfaction in being able to feel that whatever the result of the test you have done your best and that you have played a clean square game. I always feel proud of the boy who can say after he has taken a quiz.
"Well, whatever my grade is, what I handed in was entirely my own." Like Paul he can say, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith."
One of the stock arguments against examinations is that they are not fair.
"I could have answered almost anything else in the book," the boy who has just been through an examination protests. "He asked me just the things I didn't know."
This is, of course, virtually admitting that what the teacher had considered fundamental, the boy had thought of as trivial, and tends to prove that his mind had not been especially alert during the recitation periods. It is not possible that the teacher, in making a comprehensive set of examination questions, should have selected only those details with which the student was not familiar unless the student had shown little attention to what had been going on in the class recitation. Even a poor teacher makes pretty clear during the class work some of the points at least which he considers important.
I have never doubted that there are times when an examination strikes even a good student pretty hard, just as in playing a game one is sure at times to draw a poor hand or to have a bad run of luck. But just as surely he will stumble upon the easy test when everything seems to be coming his way. Sometimes, when he has apparently made little preparation, the quiz seems as easy as taking candy away from a baby. In such a case, however, I have yet to hear the first claim that examinations do not fairly measure a boy's ability. It is the average, and not the single test that truthfully measures a student's accomplishments.
I always like to hear a group of high school boys discussing grades. From such discussions, of which I have heard not a few, I would draw the conclusion that from the high school boy's point of view at least, grades do not indicate fairly a boy's accomplishment in any subject. Grades are in no sense an index of a student's real ability and do not show what he has "got out of a subject." They do not suggest anything of what he is likely to accomplish after he is through with school and college and has gone into the practical work of life. If a mistake has ever been made in a boy's grade, and such mistakes the boy admits are legion, it has always been that he has been marked lower than he deserved. I have never yet heard a boy complain that his teacher had given him a grade higher than he was entitled to. The assigning of grades, he is convinced, is very much a lottery. The teacher very likely writes the names of his students on slips of paper and puts them in one hat, and a series of grades on other slips and puts these in another hat, pulls out a name and then a grade and thus settles each boy's fate. It is a pretty generally accepted doctrine that nothing gives a teacher so much or so exquisite joy as to be able to flunk a boy. The more he flunks the more pleasure he gets out of his work.
To begin with, grades are symbols only; they should never be taken quite literally. They are meant merely to indicate the difference between poor and excellent work. The raising or the lowering of the passing grade in any school would seldom if ever influence the number who would be passed or failed. For instance, in the school which I attended seventy-five was the passing grade. At a similar institution which a boy friend attended in another country, thirty was the passing grade, and yet no larger a percentage of the students were passed in his school than in mine. The only difference was that in the school with the lower passing grade it was possible to show a greater variety of ability, and the student in his institution who was given the very high grade was entitled to somewhat more distinction than was the man who got the high grade in my institution. Students argue often that because the passing grade in a school is high the standard of excellence in that school is necessarily higher than in a school where the passing grade is lower. There is little or nothing to such an argument.
To a very large degree grades are an index of the character of the work that a student is doing. A single grade either high or low can not fairly determine an individual case, for a single grade may be the result of luck, good or bad, or, perhaps, it is better to say of chance; but a boy's average grade may in general fairly be taken to represent either his ability or his industry. If his grades are uniformly high he is either a quick, clever thinker or a hard worker; if they are regularly low, he is either dull or lazy.
"Now, father," I heard Frank explaining to his parent when questioned as to the cause of a particularly modest showing in grades at the end of a half year, "I got a lot out of those courses which doesn't show in my grades."
He was really dodging the issue as was Adam when caught with the apple or Cain when his brother was missing.
If a boy has actually secured any logical or definite information from a course the chances are overwhelmingly in favor of his being able to make clear to the teacher that this is the case. The boy who writes a poor examination is in the same class as the teacher who presents his subject badly—ten chances to one the matter is muddled in his own brain. If you will pin such a person down to actual "brass tacks," you will find that his knowledge is not clear-cut and definite.
It is not at all difficult to find illustrations of the high school and college student whose scholastic record has been commonplace or poor who later in life has made a distinct if not a brilliant business or professional success. Neither is it impossible to find illustrations of the high school and college valedictorian whose place in middle life is commonplace and whose success was never attained. The fact, however, that such cases stand out so clearly, that they make such a vivid impression upon our minds, only tends to prove that they are rather rare. The dullard in school is not hopeless; he simply has far less chance to make good than has the student who has given a good account of himself. The bright student in school and college does not have a monopoly on success; he simply has considerably more than an even chance with the other fellows to make good.
I have followed pretty carefully the record of fellows whom I knew in school and college twenty-five or thirty years ago. There are a few who did well scholastically who have done little in the positions which they have since held. In most cases, however, it is not difficult to understand why; they had alert minds without self-reliance or initiative. There are some, also, whose scholastic record was little to their credit, who are now leaders in the business or the profession which they have taken up. Here, too, the explanation is not hard to find. They had conceit and self-reliance; they were good judges of human nature, and their independence and personal magnetism outweighed their lack of ability to think and reason logically. On the whole, however, I can say that in more than ninety per cent of the cases of the fellows I have known in school and college, the success of these men could be very accurately measured by the grades which they received while they were in the high school or college. It is as sensible to claim that character is worthless, because it is possible to show that a crook occasionally gets by with his crookedness, as it is to claim that grades neither indicate a boy's success in school nor his probable progress later in life. The facts prove otherwise.
"I'm not working for grades," I hear boys say repeatedly. "I don't believe grades show much about a fellow's work."
Fathers, too, echo the same sentiments, but never so far as I can now recall, when their sons were getting anything creditable in the way of grades. It was the defense of their son's commonplace work which they were throwing up. It was another case of the fox who, when he saw that he could not reach the grapes, consoled himself by declaring them sour. It would be quite as sensible and convincing an argument, it seems to me, for a runner to say, "I don't care what time I make in the race; it doesn't seem to me that time means anything when a fellow's in a race. Just so one gets around the track a certain number of times is all that is necessary;" or for a base ball player to declare, "I don't count much on the base hits or the runs a man makes; I went to bat just as many times as any one did."
High grades are an indication of accomplishment; they show, usually, correct thinking, logical arrangement, and a grasp of fundamentals. Sometimes, it is true, they are the result of dishonest methods, or of a well-trained memory, but such cases are the exception and not the rule. The low grade, in general, suggests the commonplace student who is either slow in his thinking processes or unwilling to work. No one should be satisfied to do poorly. Every business man, every professional man, every boy in high school ought to be ambitious to excel in his special line of endeavor. It is not enough just to come out even at the end of the year or just to get by at the examination. One should have pride enough to be eager to be as good as the best.
I have been a teacher for a good many years and I know that the great body of teachers want their students to do well, and are as proud as the boys themselves when their students do attain scholastic distinction. The teacher who takes delight in seeing his students fail can occasionally be found, but only rarely, I am sure.
As I was walking home to lunch during examination time I came upon one of our instructors. He was dragging himself along very slowly and looking the picture of gloom. He is at best not a hilarious person, and he has the reputation of being a rather hard taskmaster in his classes and one who takes a certain pleasure in seeing the downfall of the unambitious student.
"What's on your mind, Fred?" I asked.
"I haven't slept well the last few nights," he admitted. "A lot of my boys haven't done well on the examinations, and I can't see why. I hate to flunk them. The fact is I've read some of the papers three or four times trying to find enough in them to pass the fellows. I'm late now in handing in my grades, and I'm just trying to determine what I ought to do."
I laughed. I am sure not one of his students would have believed me if I had told them that Professor Frederick Brown, the cold-blooded, hard-hearted instructor who took such delight in flunking every one possible, was lying awake of nights trying to devise some honest way to pass the boys; but that is what really happens more often than we imagine. Any good teacher wants his students to do well; any ambitious boy wants to get good grades.