Three Suggestions

Examinations are here again, so it is time to make the following pleas. One of them is new, one of them is middle-aged, and the other has become a semi-annual classic. But all three, if acted upon, would help to make examination time even more a period of joy, gladness, and genuine profit than it is already.

1) Proctors should say to themselves every five minutes "I am not now, nor was I ever, a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." By doing this, they might be able to eliminate the stealthy creep and the awful eye that characterize so many Harvard examination rooms. A student taking an exam is a pathetic creature. Let him at least feel that if he looks around the room or glances at his watch, he is not in danger of instant indictment by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

2) Without exception, students should be allowed to see their corrected exams and to discuss them with some official of the course in question. This point has been made in these columns many times, and it deserves to be made again. If there is any educational value at all in the business of taking examinations, a large part of it is lost when a student can not find out what was good and what was poor in his paper.

On top of that, he ought to be able to keep his paper. Whether he wants it for future reference, or for sentiment's sake, or for no special reason at all, he has more use for it than the particular Department involved, which can do nothing more valuable with it than donate it to an old-paper drive.

3) On second thought, maybe the old-paper drive is just the place for Harvard examination papers. That is, to judge by the quality of the writing. The sort of English that characterizes most examinations ought to make even the most hard-bitten English A instructors shriek with shame. The time pressure inherent in the examination system causes a good bit of the poor writing, but at least some of it is due to carelessness. Authors of flagrant examples of careless writing--grotesque grammar, bizarre vocabulary, murky syntax-- should be reported without compunction to the Faculty Committee on the Use of English by Students. The Committee exists in order to take care of just such people. In the past it has received so little business that you would think all Harvard examinations were written by Addison and Steele. But since many of them read more as though they were written by L'il Abner, the Committee should be getting a much larger clientele.