THE WIDOW'S MITE

Complaints about examinations are usually directed against questions which presuppose knowledge which the student does not feel he should be required to have gained in the course. Only occasionally is the complaint directed against questions on the ground that they are too general. The English 72 examination reprinted in part elsewhere on this page affords a striking example of this last type of examination. There is nothing petty in any of the required questions. All are manifest attempts to allow the student to tell what he knows about the five poets studied in the course.

The undesirability of the examination lies in its inordinate length which, by the physical limitations of writing, precludes any opportunity for the student to show a grasp beyond the major elements of each of the poets. Inquiries reveal that the average number of words which students, in varied fields answering various types of questions, can write without having to pause is not over 1,300 words per hour. These figures will be admitted to be high, for many men questioned were amazed to find that others did write at such a rate. By applying these figures to the English 72 examination the student's handicap is apparent.

At a rate of 1,300 words an hour the number of words in which to discuss each of the questions about each of the poets will be 130. In those 130 words the student is expected to give, for instance, the account of circumstances and events affecting the poetry of Wordsworth and to give a brief statement of the results of those influences. Several lectures were devoted to tracing such influences in the poetry of Wordsworth, and the brief notes run into thousands of words. Much of this is, of course, unnecessary on an examination; but even in the bare outline of 130 words, in which the student is forced to take the position that the correctors take nothing for granted, it will be seen that it is impossible to give, even in outline form, more than a few of the outstanding events, all of which might have been learned without ever opening a book.

The unfairness of such an examination lies in the fact that it gives the man who has studied widely and searchingly; no chance to get beyond the general and elemental information which can be gathered at any tutoring school. In fact, the tutoring bureau notes used four times as many words, and that means that they were four times as varied and searching as the answers could be if the student planned his examination and kept within time limits.

The questions asked are silent testimony of the desire of the officials in charge to allow men to show what they did know instead of what they did not know. But the length of the examination cut short (because of the purely physical limitations of writing) the answers of those who were eager to push beyond the obvious and often repeated facts.