If the examination system is still with us, it is not because its merits outweigh its defects. It has been widely condemned, not least by examiners themselves. Ploughed candidates quite frequently succeed in proving that examinations had lied about them. Victorious examinees in the flush of success often go forth into the world confident of carrying everything before them only to find how sadly they have been fooled by the favours of the examination deity. Examiners have been known to examine their model answers and plough themselves. The usual excuse that they do it in ignorance of the authorship of the answers subjected to such discourteous treatment, cannot be said to affect the argument that the examination system has both little insight and less conscience. There is today a general tendency to admit this argument. Can we sufficiently account for the tendency?
Without yet knowing what exactly is intelligence, we can more or less certain that it is the most important factor underlying the effectiveness of our lives. Intelligence is source of power. The orthodox examination system rarely tests intelligence and even more is hardly capable of testing it. This is the reason why new tests having nothing in common with the methods of the old examination system are rising to importance in several advanced countries and there is no reason to doubt that when these tests are sufficiently developed they will largely supersede the present system of examinations. But it is a far cry and the sands of examinations do not appear to be running out. It is however an educational victory that the old fallacy that examinations are capable of measuring human intelligence and capacity has been exposed. What mental ability in the candidates do these examinations then measure? If it is not intelligence, it is also neither imagination nor originality if one may thus speak analytically of a composite human gift in which several strands are inseparably woven together. Neither is it that general capacity that gives men their driving force in life that gives them the strength to overcome difficulties that makes it dull for them to pause. These negative qualities of examinations have been brought to light time and again. But what do they test, if not these things so vital to life? The experience of years has shown that the examination system reaches only a fraction of the mechanism of the mind and that generally speaking examinations test little more than what we call memory.
Memory like most other mental qualities, is a vague term. What is commonly understood by memory has played an important part in the progress of the human race. Our grand heritage of knowledge owes not a little to the power of the human mind to hold the images that come into contact with it. In ancient times, when books were unknown, memory fulfilled the proud function of keeping wisdom alive and memory therefore has been naturally admired through the centuries. We have inherited from the ancient times a profound reverence for memory although our use for it is so very much smaller than our ancestors. And this reverence partly accounts for the persistence of an examination system which is concerned far more with memory than with intelligence, originativeness, imagination, in short with that adventurousness of the mind from which have risen the highest art and the highest science of modern times. It is often said that the present age is a mechanical one ruled by collective crazes and monotonous emotions by group and slave mentalities but those who think below the surface must be willing to admit that it is above all the age of ideas of originalities of thought piercing dark realms and those who call for proof might be directed to the psychological novels, to plays of mental disobediences to pictures of wistful dreams and to science following knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
It is at this time of a tremendously new kind of advance in the human family that a faculty of the mind, out living to a great extent its old-time importance, remains installed as judge .. and it is not surprising that the judgement of the examination court are not always taken seriously in an age giving allegiances to other mental faculties than the ability to remember things.
And what sort of memory do examinations test? Broadly speaking, two kinds of memory can be distinguished _ the mechanical and the creative. Mechanical memory is like bottled up solution to be uncorked for use whever occasion arises. The bottle has no power to improve the quality of the solution that it holds. On the other hand, if the contents are kept unshaken overlong the purity of the bottle itself might be threatened. By this it is not meant that retentive memory is useless but its usefulness is not half so great as the importance that examinations attach to it. Since it is the candidates that are born with a bent for this kind of memory that are exacted by the examinations usually, it is only naturally that the great men and women in several fields of these times are often found not to have come from our schools and universities.
Unhappily, the other kind of memory enters the examination system to no considerable extent. Creative or reproductive memory is a near relation to that wiser, and supremely more important, faculty of the mind called imagination. Creative memory is the power to bring a living mind to act impressively on the knowledge garnered in the mind. In modern needs and conditions of life such memory is only second in importance to imagination. In truth, imagination in alliance with creative memory has today the widest scope of all human capabilities. The examination system, consciously or unconsciously, gives the cold shoulder to this vital branch of mind.
Indeed, from its very nature it can hardly act otherwise. What counts in an examination is to show what is known. There are things we know that we cannot show we know, and these sometimes are distinctly more valuable than things we know and can show we know. In brief, examinable knowledge is more or less inter matter encumbering rather than helping the mind. The examination system cannot therefore encourage the intangible educationable desultura, the romancing spirit the ever roving activity of eye and mind that sees many aspects of the universe as it goes rolling by. That is unable to produce what it has understood at the behest of a question paper. From the point of view of examinations, this sublime craze for cruising in space with open eyes and mind so natural to early and adolescent years which is so abundant of promise is of no great value and is not given sufficient encouragement in our educational institutions.
For example, look what havoc is made by the examination obsession in schools. Peotry is made paraphrase if not periphrasis. Prose becomes a mere marshalling of words to a set of mechanical rules. Composition becomes a sort of unskilled copy work. Science sheds its urge and appeal. And history and geography linger like ghosts only because the examinations ask them. Teaching is forgotten and the dull reverberation of languid coaching fills the classrooms. Life asks for vital knowledge. Under these circumstances one cannot complain if the findings of examinations do not coincide with the needs and opportunities of life.
And, moreover, a considerable percentage of the school going population is congenitally awkward at writing for examinations. They may know what is expected to them without being able to produce it in the way and the time prescribed. This inability is more often due to some passing peculiarity of mind than to any permanent defect in it, so that despite failure at examinations success in life is quite frequently attained. Then again, handwriting looms very much larger at examinations than in life. It is likely that a slow writer will find it supremely difficult to pass an examination.
Finally, before leaving this aspect of the subject, let it be stated, platitude as it is that the examination system can neither encourage nor tell the character of the candidates that come under its away. The contents of human temperament are beyond computation and certainly beyond the meagre measure of the examination system.
It will thus be seen that the examination system has access to only some few minor aspects of life and that even with regard to these it is apt often to go wrong. It is therefore, necessary to reduce its importance in education. It is certainly necessary to sidered in the nature of a necessary evil. It may be that they are a necessary useful evil for they often act as an instrument of discipline a compeller of work if only for a brief spell and a foreteller of the inequalities and annoyances that one may have to meet with in real life. But since, considering the narrow and slippery basis on which they stand as tests of human worth, they are predominantly an evil it is necessary to humanize them and it is possible to humanize them. The right and earnest examiner can undoubtedly do much to save examinations from the large mass of blame attaching to them. The wrong and insincere examiner had undoubtedly done much to feed the forces of this blame.
The ameliorative process must however proceed from the teacher. Ideals are the alpha and omega of education. It is for the teacher in whom vests the strength and enthusiasm of ideals to prevent the tail from wagging the head to prevent examinations from holding education in fee. The teacher's highest function is to kindle the right tendencies in the pupils and not to supply them with tips for passing this or that examination. When he begins to do so he prostitutes his vocation to an ephemeral end and sells himself as it were, to mess of pottage. He is then a fallen angel. He coaches his pupils at so much hundred weight per hour, and is paid his daily wages for the degraded work he turns out; but the teacher in him, the lamp-bearer, is extinguished. But if he remains true to his call, examinations must gradually alter their ill conditioned appetites and learn to live on the superior fare he provides. He must not try to buy off examinations with cram for then examinations will ask or infinitely more
cram than be can manufacture. It is the essence of his office to chasten examination instead of fattening them to humanize examinations by compelling them to understand boys and girls instead of attempting to break them or to bend them unduly.
Coming to examinations proper three factors call for consideration _ the examiner the candidate and the subject. Of these the examiner is the most important. He should understand it and frame the questions accordingly. He should value the answers in the light of this understanding, remembering too that common sense is more important than a momentary memory of things and that he must have both his eyes open to discover the hiding traces of mental resources. Unfortunately, examiners who act according to their lights are not by any means common.
Those who are familiar with the inner working of the examination system are not likely to ask for chapter and verse. It would however help examiners if an example or two are given for the justice must be done to them that they are not intentionally careless.
Take the School Leaving Certificate Examination. In most parts of India the examiners generally are professors of colleges, whose knowledge of the high school and its population is perhaps confined to a faded reminiscence of their own boyhoods. They make the question paper according to their notions of things. This generally includes a desire to see if the candidates have some smattering of the knowledge they themselves happen to possess and on which they naturally place some value. Curiously enough these examiners are often the first to cry down the crammer and the swotter. They have although they may not admit it their own question papers to thank at least to a considerable extent, for the evils they lament. Cram will not eternally be exposed if it ceases to sell. The chief examiner, who is the maker of the question paper not infrequently decides before the valuation of the answers the percentage of passes he would allow. He accordingly instructs the assistant examiners, to whom the work of valuation mainly falls to take frequent averages as the valuation goes forward, and to manipulate the standards of marking in order to make them suit his decision.
I had once the company of three friends in the work of valuation. We used to show one another strikingly had or good gave either very high or very low marks, whatever was the quality of the answers in either way. He called it playing for safety and in his conception it was the first axiom of wise assistant examinership. The plonghing of deserving candidates, on account of timidity to award high marks to the questions that were attempted (however supremely well for the standard), was common. On the other hand many undeserving candidates were passed because they had attempted all the questions, although not a single one was satisfactory answered. Evidences of originality imagination and reasoning were not carefully searched for. Examiners have to work against time and judgements have to be hurriedly made.
An equable examiner, addicted to the middle path was giving sixty seven out of one hundred marks to a candidate. He began to worry himself unduly and remained inconsolable until one that was classmating with him at the time made the discovery that the clever candidate had served two of his good answers twice.
I knew an examiner innocent of the art of judging answers, and he was an examiner for many years. He was a sincere and painstaking man. He would read every answer paper very carefully and sometimes several times and scratch his head while his pencil idly cut such numbers as 2, 3, 4 and sometimes even 6 or 7, on the air. Suddenly after a time he would stiffen his hold on the instrument and decisively imprit one of the air images on the margin of the answer book.
Examinations must become absurd if great care is not taken in the selection of chief and assistant examiners. It is often forgotten that examiners must be qualified for the work of scrutinizing as much as teachers must be qualified for the work of teaching. Indeed, both are often forgotten. Examiners themselves must have some imagination to catch the true colour of the answers, which is the first step in the humanization of the examination system.
Some of the complaints that are now more or less justly made against examinations could surely be avoided. It must be borne in mind that question papers and answer papers are essentially human things, asking and deserving humanity when they are dealt with. The number of examinations could itself be reduced. Examiners, selected for their wisdom and culture, must be given the power to pass candidates on the strength of even one good answer, should they be satisfied that it gave evidence of qualities deserving pass. The volume of information must count less at examinations than the indication of intellectual qualities. This will also check `the survival of the unfit', which has to-day become a regular feature at Indian examinations.
The examination system is in all conscience sufficiently mechanical, irrational and unconnected with the actual needs of life to need further degradation. If it is not possible to abolish it just yet, it should not be impossible to humanize it, and for this few things can be so supremely helpful as understanding.