LIVES RUINED BY EXAMINATIONS

Evening Star, Issue 22449, 21 September 1936, Page 10

LIVES RUINED BY EXAMINATIONS

Another attack on the school examination system came from psychologists at the International Conference of the New Education Fellowship at Cheltenham, says the ‘ Daily Telegraph. They spoke of lives ruined by examinations, and asked for tests of capacity at an early age. _ Teachers, said Dr, R. B. Cattell, director of the Leicester School Psychological Service, ridiculed the ordinary type of examination, parents deplored it, and children suffered from it; yet so far it had not been found possible to'replace it by any successful substitute. The marking of essay papers, for instance, had been shown to be criminally unreliable. Dr Cattell added, “ When I think of the inquiries about examinations I like to remember the case of, the American examiner, one of four in a university who, for his own convenience, wrote a model answer which accidentally got included with the scripts sent to the other examiners, all three of whom failed him. “ The gross unreliability of the ordinary type of examination has been known for a long time to educators. Probably the dictating of the curriculum and the narrowing of the conception of education are the worst features of examinations. “ The solution to which we must come is -a conception of the examination as a test, as a diagnostic interlude purely incidental to the main course of education. No doctor claims to improve examiners’ breathing by the use of the stethoscope. “ Methods of examination may occasionally do damage—entirely temporary and trivial damage—to the function tested.” Speaking of “ casualties of the examination system,” Miss Simmins, of the Institute of Psychology, said;—• “ Some of the most distressing cases I see and test are young men and some middle-aged ones whose entire lives have been spoiled because their whole school life was spent_ in unavailing efforts to reach a particular examination standard. “T have cases in mind of boys who went through school always depressed and discouraged, who left school already feeling that they were failures in life, and, many years later, had to be treated by psychiatrists and psychologists, not having been able to make anythjng of their lives.” Psychologists, said Miss Simmins, .were now able to assess .the intelligence and capacity of a child at a very early ■ age and to forecast what he would be. able to do in school years or later.