Examination

“ Examinations, examinations by teachers who understand this very fine art, in which the student is obliged to restate, apply, and use the principles of his subject, are of the utmost value in keeping the mind active and not simply receptive. They are just as good and as vitally necessary as examination papers which merely demand definitions and lists and bald facts are bad. ”

“ Wherever examinations are introduced—and by examinations I understand any demand for answers to questions—there appears only a new and useless object, demanding special labor, special qualities, and this object is called preparation for examinations or lessons. The pupil in the gymnasium learns history or mathematics, and in addition something important—the art of answering examination questions. ”

“ EXAMINEE. One who is examined; one who undergoes at examination.
What loads of cold beef and lobster vanish before the examinees. —Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 72.
EXAMINER. One who examines. In colleges and seminaries of learning, the person who interrogates the students, proposes questions for them to answer, and problems to solve. ”

“ The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view, as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom. ”

“ Usually the examination is regarded as a test to determine the accuracy and extent of the student's information, which form may be called a question-and-answer examination or quiz. A more desirable form of examination is one which requires the student to survey his information on a particular topic, and to summarize the same or to state his own conclusions concerning either the relative importance of the different items or his interpretation of the meaning or application of the facts. ”

“ TRIALS A GIFT FROM GOD Thou hast written concerning the tests that have come upon thee. To the sincere ones, tests are as a gift from God, the Exalted, for a heroic person hasteneth, with the utmost joy and gladness, to the tests of a violent battlefield, but the coward is afraid and trembles and utters moaning and lamentation. Likewise, an expert student prepareth and memorizeth his lessons and exercises with the utmost effort, and in the day of examination he appeareth with infinite joy before the master. ”

“ It isn't necessary, even if it were probable, for you to have these grand-stand tests you read about in books; if you can stand the every-day trial of seeing your friends get ahead of you, then you will pass the examination. ”

“ What is the true motive of examinations? Real teaching leads to the systematic, all-sided up-building of a compact body of knowledge in the mind. In this up-building or instruction, every faculty of the mind is brought into action—perception, judgment, classification, reason, imagination, and memory. Examinations, then, should test the condition and progress of the mind in its development. Is the common standard of examinations a test of real teaching? If I am not mistaken, the examinations usually given simply test the pupil's power of memorizing disconnected facts. ”

“ Whenever a class is given a series of review questions for the purpose of requiring a general review of a whole subject, the result of the exercise is to fix in the student’s mind certain larger elements of the study and to establish certain broad habits of selection. Written examinations may be, from this point of view, devices of training, not merely tests of results. The examination method as a training method has, accordingly, an important place. ”

“ We have seen that the ascendency of the examination system in our schools and colleges is largely due to the vulgar confusion between information and knowledge; and we have also seen that the examination system reacts upon that fatal confusion and tends to strengthen and perpetuate it. ”

“ Believe firmly that you will pass the examination. Make strong suggestions to yourself, affirming positively that you have the requisite amount of information and the ability to express it coherently and forcefully. Fortified by the consciousness of faithful application throughout the work of a course, reinforced by a thorough, well-planned review, and with a firm conviction in the strength of your own powers, you may approach your examinations with comparative ease and with good chances of passing them creditably. ”

“ Since an examination is, in effect, a form of psychological test, it is natural that psychologists should have attempted to introduce some of the technique of psychological testing into the work of examining students, in the interest of economy of the student's time as well as that of the examiner. The teacher prepares blanks which the student can quickly fill out if he knows the subject, not otherwise. ”

“ The second innovation in method of teaching, namely, supervised study, came as a reaction against the purely examination method of conducting class exercises which was formerly almost universal except in laboratory classes. The examination method is the familiar one of calling a pupil to his feet and then asking him one question after another to find out whether he has learned his lesson. If he answers well, he is marked with a high grade. If he answers badly, he is marked with a low grade, reprimanded, and told to do his work over. ”

“ We have, therefore, to assume that their perceptions will vary with the number and manner of their accomplishments, and we may almost convince ourselves that each examinee who has to give evidence concerning his sense-perception should literally undergo examination to make clear his scholarly status and thereby the value of his testimony. ”

“ For the purpose of examination the student is tempted to load his memory with many details and to learn by heart statements which may or may not be true, simply for the purpose of committing them to paper and thus gaining good marks in competitive examinations without considering in the least whether these statements are true, or whether the facts, so called, are likely to help him at all in his future life. ”

“ Use of examinations.Having lived through the pre-examination period, and seen the great evils which resulted from there being no test, I cannot join in the popular condemnation. There is no unmixed good, and many mistakes, which we learn to avoid later, are made when a system is new. ”

“ If there existed such a thing as a really national education or a trustworthy system of general examination, education might be tested directly. In the absence of these, the nature of a person's occupation is some test. ”

“ In process of time, it needs must be that a new school of examiners will arise, who, taking the results at which their predecessors have arrived from an examination of the primary elements, will institute a secondary comparison ”

“ If you master the subject, all legitimate questions asked on examination will be easily answered. The hard examination to you is an examination in which you do not know how to answer the questions. If you have mastered the subject you will very probably know the answers to most of the reasonable questions asked. Cramming for examination33 is usually time wasted. To study and cram on question books and old lists of examination questions is time thrown away. Get your text-book and try to master the principles and divisions of the subjects, and your time is well spent. ”

“ A more important test is a thesis studied from original sources, and the most important is good-conduct marks in a certain arbitrary number of set lecture courses. The policeman's examination is supreme. ”

“ Erudition would be tested by the power of writing, at leisure, a dissertation on some subject selected by the examiners or the candidate or, in the case of a teacher, by the delivery of a lecture on the subject. At the French agrégation candidates are given twenty-four hours for the preparation of a lecture of this kind. Such examinations would test the “skill in the manipulation of facts which is the true sign of a trained intelligence” (cf. K. Pearson, “The Function of Science in the Modern State,” Ency. Brit. 10th ed. xxxii. Prefatory essay) . ”

“ In view of the importance of examinations, then, it is natural that they be regarded with considerable fear and trepidation, and it is important that we devise what rules we can for meeting their exactious demands with greatest ease and effectiveness.
Examinations serve several purposes, the foremost of which is to inform the examiner regarding the amount of knowledge possessed by the student. In discovering this, two methods may be employed; first, to test whether or not the student knows certain things, plainly a reproductive exercise ”

“ Again the examination often serves as an incentive to harder work on the part of the student, for if one knows there will be an examination in a subject, one usually studies with greater zeal than when an examination is not expected. ”

“ The examination, one of the stiffest in the world, lasted for a month or more. The subjects are various, but no one is compelled to take all subjects or any particular subject; each candidate takes what subjects he pleases, and candidates are judged by the aggregate marks they obtain in the subjects they take up. ”

“ The other form of school examination employed for disposing of failures is the special examination, usually following some definite preparation, and given at the discretion of the teacher or department head. ”

“ For an adequate scientific examination of the question of registers, many qualifications are required in the investigator; and the student, when not an investigator, should endeavor to weigh the evidence presented so as to choose with caution from among conflicting opinions. ”

“ I’ll give you girls an examination myself. You need some practice before the real business begins, and it will be just the thing for this wet afternoon. Get out your books and pencils and I’ll dictate the questions. It’s to be a ‘General Intelligence’ paper, and the examiner’s instructions are—use your wits! They will not be the ordinary blunt, straightforward questions manufactured by the masculine mind, and intended mainly for the coarse, masculine ability, but full of depth and subtlety, so that they will require careful consideration. ”

“ The access to progressive examinations, of such a character as to test and attest advanced attainments, would, there is every reason to believe, at once begin to work in lengthening the period of study. ”

“ You don't in the least understand, Fräulein. Examinations are the entrance to every good position in life, no matter whether you stay at the university, study law, architecture, or go into the Civil Service. ”

“ The cross-examination of various experts, whether medical, handwriting, real estate, or other specialists, is a subject of growing importance, but it is intended in this chapter merely to make some suggestions, and to give a few illustrations of certain methods that may be adopted with more or less success in the examination of this class of witnesses. ”

“ The duty of the Examiners was twofold, firstly to ascertain by inspecting the schedules given by his Masters that the candidate had completed the necessary residence and attended Lectures in the prescribed subjects, and secondly to examine him in the contents of his books. If he passed this Examination, he was admitted to determine.
Determination was a great day in the student's University life. It retained much of its primitive character of a student's festivity. ”

“ The ordinary and standardized school and university examinations, 28civil-service examinations, etc., which have long been the accepted test of the individual’s ability, do not, and do not purport to, measure anything more than this last item, that of acquired knowledge. ”

“ Furthermore, it is well known that a psychical examination demands preparation on the part of the person to be examined, complete repose from all emotion, isolation of the senses, etc., the preparation depending upon the special research which it is desired to make ”

“ An examination will, we think, prove the work to be practical and dependable, and generally to express good common sense, and consequently good law. You will, we hope, find it worth your careful study and guidance. ”

“ Directed reading, conferences on knotty points, special lectures followed by the questioning of the lecturer, discussions upon matters of opinion, laboratory work when needful, fairly frequent test examinations, and a final examination for places, are the proper ingredients of a good modern College course, and in the necessity of leaving the Professor’s energies free for the direction of all this really educational work, lies another reason for that complete, explicit, well-arranged text-book upon which I am insisting. ”

“ The examination of a number of schools by able and intelligent observers (and such qualifications the inspectors eminently display) has thrown much light upon a subject in which there must ever be some practical difficulty. ”

“ This will appear from an examination of a few of the strongest cases on each side of the question.'
He then goes into an examination of the decided cases, for which it is only necessary to refer to the case itself. ”

“ The examiner's mind runs into grooves, and a highly skilled class have sorted and surveyed the possible field. In each subject or book there are only available, in practice, some few hundreds of possible "questions." The system of publishing examination papers, and close study of the questions over many years, have taught a body of experts to reduce, classify, and tabulate these. ”

“ Our teachers must pass an examination—though the examiner sometimes does not know as much as the candidate,—for misguiding the youthful mind; the lawyer cannot practice without study and a formal admission to the bar ”