Systematic errors.
Well, I’ve just skimmed through Tag’s blog and there was this post about… if I remember correctly, to “stop fucking A levels” and not complain about the system. Did I get that correct? Hope so, cause I’m feeling rather lazy to Ctrl-T and really pore through it. But anyway I would like to state my observation of the current time allocations of exams, which may seem a little unsubstantiated and myopic, but I duly hope the thoughts make sense.
There’s simply too little time to show how much we’ve truly understood.
Exams, essentially, are used as a measure of how well we know our content, by that, meaning our familiarity, depth of understanding, and hence ability to apply relevant skills with the knowledge gained over the past two years that coincide with the learning outcomes. One obvious flaw that remains to date, unaddressed for obvious reasons, would be that not all content can be squeezed into a single exam. Yes, some may say it is possible to lengthen exams to 5 hour long marathons with double the questions, but these people are obviously masochistic so we shall ignore them. But what is in deficit, is the amount of time available to fully expound our knowledge. The most direct counter-argument is that many students have been able to do so in the past (hence it shouldn’t be a problem for future generations), and that this helps to separate the good from the excellent. We are however, increasing the difficulty of questions every year; students pumped full with additional knowledge to help them deal with novel questions. While it is quite difficult to point out if Cambridge’s increasingly difficult questions are fuelling this trend or the other way round, I think the time allocated to do each question should be increased relative to the difficulty.
To draw up some examples, I would like to illustrate this point first with Economics. Case studies are requiring higher level skills, question requirements for essays becoming more although question length remains more or less the same. Precision and accuracy are the most essential skills needed to deal with them. But to fully cover the scope of the question would be a problem. The time limit is placing an unnecessary penalization on those who write just that tad slower. Write faster then, you would chorus. But is that really a valid suggestion? Constructive, no doubt, in the short term for the individual. But I really doubt, with my perhaps-myopic perspective that writing speed actually matters in the “real world”. Lengthening time limits would leave detractors saying that those who are not familiar with the content would be able to take advantage of the extra time, and hence an inaccurate reflection of the students’ abilities. One such subject that would be brought up to support this point would be Math. But in the case of Math, wouldn’t a genius who is able to work out answers without revising much be valued over someone who mugged half his lifetime just so he could do those questions? Pragmatism may lead us to the realization that pure genius is a rather good advantage that can be built upon. Chances are that dilligence can be inculcated but intellect cannot be created. And to be honest, the chances of figuring out math questions without basic understanding are rather low. Hence, the increase in time would not result in poor distillation between the good and the less academically inclined.
What I’m proposing isn’t something radical like 2 hours more for every exam or something along that scale. It would be frivolous and unnecessary. Perhaps, something like 15-20 mins? That could make a world of difference. It may mean one page more of full content that shows the examiners that hey, I didn’t slog 2 years just to show you nonsense (thanks to my chimeric hand of snail and human genes).
