We might marvel at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years, educationists have still failed to devise anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite.They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell nothing about a person’s true ability and aptitude.
我們可能會驚嘆于各個研究領(lǐng)域所取得的進步，但測試一個人的知識和能力的方法卻仍然像以前一樣原始。這么多年過去了，教育學家們?nèi)匀粵]能設(shè)計出比考試更有效、更可靠的方法，這確實令人感到不可思議。考試可能是測試記憶力的好方法，也可能是測試在極端壓力下快速工作的訣竅的好方法，但它們對一個人的真正能力和資質(zhì)卻一無所知。
As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none. That is because so much depends on them. They are the mark of success or failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother dies. Little things like that don’t count: the exam goes on. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. Can we wonder at the increasing number of ‘drop-outs’: young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students?A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memories. Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce cramming. They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedom. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress.
作為焦慮的制造者，考試是首屈一指的。這是因為很多事情都取決于考試。它們是我們社會成敗的標志。你的整個未來都可能在某一天被決定。你身體不舒服，或者你母親去世，這些都不重要。這樣的小事并不重要：考試還在繼續(xù)。沒有人能夠在惶恐不安或徹夜難眠的情況下全力以赴，然而這正是考試制度所期望的。從孩子入學的那一刻起，他就進入了一個惡性競爭的世界，在這個世界里，成功和失敗都有明確的定義和衡量標準。我們能對越來越多的 "輟學者 "感到驚訝嗎：這些年輕人甚至還沒有開始職業(yè)生涯，就已經(jīng)被視為徹底的失敗者？我們會對學生的自殺率感到驚訝嗎？考試制度卻沒有做到這一點。教學大綱硬性規(guī)定了必須學習的內(nèi)容，鼓勵學生死記硬背。考試不能激勵學生廣泛閱讀，反而限制了他的閱讀量；考試不能使學生尋求更多的知識，反而誘發(fā)了填鴨式學習?？荚嚱档土私虒W水平，因為它剝奪了教師的一切自由。教師本身也常常以考試成績作為評判標準，他們不是在教授自己的學科，而是在訓(xùn)練學生掌握他們所鄙視的考試技巧。最成功的考生并不總是受過最好教育的人，他們是在壓力下工作的技巧方面訓(xùn)練有素的人。
The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. They get tired and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge’s decision on you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner’s. There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person’s true abilities. It is cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: ‘I were a teenage drop-out and now I are a teenage millionaire.’
考試成績的好壞往往取決于某個匿名考官的主觀評價?？脊僖彩侨?。他們會累，會餓，會犯錯誤。然而，他們必須在有限的時間內(nèi)批改成堆潦草的答卷。他們的工作壓力與考生不相上下。他們的話很有分量。在法官做出決定后，你有權(quán)上訴，但在考官做出決定后就沒有了。肯定有許多更簡單、更有效的方法來評估一個人的真實能力。有人說，考試不過是考試機構(gòu)的一種盈利手段，這是否有點無恥？歸根結(jié)底，這就是問題所在。對考試制度最好的評價，莫過于最近寫在墻上的這則文盲留言： 我曾是輟學少年，現(xiàn)在是百萬富翁。
