Of the things you learned under pressure of exams and grades, how many of them do you actually remember? That is, did you learn for long enough to pass the test, or did you learn?
I'm well aware of the modern movement to discredit tests, arguing that doing well on tests have nothing to do with knowing the material. I'm not a subscriber to that. If you are, I expect you'll be disappointed with the results.
It's also why there are athletic competitions. It brings out the best in athletes as they strive to win. Are their achievements fake?
No one is saying tests 'have nothing to do with knowing the material'. The point is that a test environment isn't ideal for gauging how well someone knows materials.
Our system of testing incentivizes teaching to the test and a focus on pointless memorization.
Our schools aren't supposed to be competitions, at least not primarily. Comparing them to athletics events is silly. If we wanted to find out "who is the best at taking test", then a test is the most appropriate tool. If we want to find out "Can Timmy do geometry", a classical closed-book, timed test isn't the best measurement.
It comes down to, what is the point of testing students? What is gained by restricting access to clarifying materials or enforcing arbitrary time limits?
>Nobody said it was "ideal". Sheesh. But nobody has found a better way.
I mean, there are plenty of people who have found a better way. They get pushback from folks who think testing is the end-all-be-all of knowledge assessment.
>News flash: some tests are poorly conceived.
It's more like they are flawed from the get-go
>Allow me to reframe that. Would you get on an airplane piloted by a fellow who was never tested on his flying knowledge and skill?
I don't think it really benefits anyone to come up with irrelevant strawmen. Just like athletes, with pilots we care about their performance under specific conditions. Of course pilots should be tested in the conditions they should be working in. Obviously testing for specific things is necessary.
The problem with the analogy is that the testing we use in K-16 doesn't mimic any real world conditions.
A QB needs to be able to perform on the field and thats what we gauge them by. There is no reason an 8th grader needs to be able to solve X amount of problems in 50 minutes or whatever. It's adding elements to the assessment that are irrelevant for gauging knowledge.
> I don't think it really benefits anyone to come up with irrelevant strawmen.
It's perfectly relevant. Tests are used all the time to gauge mastery of a topic.
> irrelevant for gauging knowledge
It's not at all irrelevant. When you've mastered something, it doesn't take long to produce the answer. For example, the better at math I got, the faster I could answer the questions. If it takes one an hour to multiply 123x456, one is reinventing multiplication rather than knowing multiplication.
Mastery and speed are strongly correlated.
Caltech classes sometimes had "infinite time" exams. But the students hated them. There was always the temptation to do more on them, and the students wanted an end to it, as they had lots of classes with exams.
>It's perfectly relevant. Tests are used all the time to gauge mastery of a topic.
I think you must just be extremely mistaken on what people are talking about then. I can't understand why you think that anyone is calling for pilots not to be given tests.
>It's not at all irrelevant. When you've mastered something, it doesn't take long to produce the answer. For example, the better at math I got, the faster I could answer the questions. If it takes one an hour to multiply 123x456, one is reinventing multiplication rather than knowing multiplication.
You aren't everyone though. Some people get major test anxiety, some people are good at doing math but bad at memorizing equations.
Just call a spade a spade. Do we care about how fast a student can do 10 math problems? Or do we care that the student can do the 10 math problems? Those are just different things. Most people only care if the student can do the 10 math problems.
>Mastery and speed are strongly correlated.
But speed is irrelevant to mastery. You can master a skill without doing it as quickly as others.
> But the students hated them. There was always the temptation to do more on them, and the students wanted an end to it, as they had lots of classes with exams.
That sounds like a personal problem. Probably because they grew up taking tests that were more about memorization and regurgitation than they are about recognizing when you've answered a question completely.
At the end of the day it comes down what are metric for success is. If you can cram for a test, that is a good indication that the test is mostly a test of your ability to regurgitate answers. If two students can get 100% on a math test, and one student takes an hour and the other takes an hour and half, most people would consider them both proficient on those math questions.
You, for whatever reason, think speed at answering questions is important. Lots of others, including most people who study education, don't share that view.
> It's also why there are athletic competitions. It brings out the best in athletes as they strive to win.
Majority of people don't participate in athletic competitions. They checks out. These are for elite majority interested in finding out who is best of the best while everybody else sits on sofa and watches them on youtube.
Ideally, education should not have majority of students ignoring whole thing exists or merely watching others compete without every learning themselves.
You seem to be ascribing to me a position that I do not hold. I don't have a problem with test as a measure. I don't exactly have a problem with tests as a motivational device, either. I have a problem with cramming as a learning technique. I don't think it works very well for actual long-term learning.
False dichotomy. What you call "not studying" would vary between effectively dropping out (for the people who are only at uni to get drunk and end up with a degree at the end), gaining a more thorough holistic understand of the material, or diving really deep on some of the aspects that are most interesting at the cost of others.
The drink-and-get-a-certificate people will indeed profit from being encouraged to study, but the controversial opinion here would be that university should only or mainly care about those.
Is it controversial to say that cramming (remember, we're talking about studying under the deadline of a coming test) is not a great way to learn for long-term retention?
Is it better than not studying at all? Probably... but not much.
