220

‘.SCRATOH A PROFESSOR AND

trial, surrealistic and forbid- ding. A cavernous gymnas~ ium, its flooring sheathed in plastic, basketball nets lifted on high by gantries. In pour several hundred young men and women, many feigning exuberance, some pale and withdrawn. They fan out as sappers cross a minefield, obeying with remarkable pre- cision a sign telling candi- dates in English to face the front of the hall, candidates in Psychology the rear.

It’s examination time again.

On tables “placed at least five feet apart” (Regulations for the province of Ontario, section 7,‘ sub-section 37) the Young people deposit their personal effects —— a watch, a packet of Kleenex, an array of T—Ball Jotters, a roll of Wild Cherry Lifesavers and Other talismanns in time of trouble. Complying with No. 5 of the “Rules for the Con- duct of Examinations, Uni- Yersity of Toronto,” the lad- les “dispose of their purses by placing them on the floor underneath their chairs.” I e chief presiding officer, 111 Whom there lurks a regi- IIlental sergeant-major strug- gling to escape, shouts for Silence, which at first he does not get. “If I had a micro- phone,” he bawls', “I’d blast You all from the room.” The

candidates are quiet now. The

papers are distributed.

English 100 is an essay- tyDe examination. It requires

discussions of how the storm ‘

Scenes in King Lear show the Sievdopmerit of its protagon- 18t of the character of Ish-

mael, of the teaser, “If man was created perfect, how could he fall ?”‘ Psychology 120, striving after scientific respectability is an objective- type examination. “TAKE TIME NOW, ONE MORE TIME,” it enjoins the: candi- date in: capitals, “TO CARE- FULLY R E REA D AND CARR-Y OUT THE IN- STRUCTIONS BELO ,” of which there follow 10. No. 4 says: “At all times when us- ing your special pencil be sure to press firmly and to make all marks (1 is ti n c t, heavy and black. Marks that do not register could well re- sult in lowered exam Scores. There is small chance of this being detected.” Having fam- iliarized' himself with forms, cards, codes, special pencils and the rest of the appara- tus of higher education, as the pilot of a 707 checks out its controls before taking to the air, the candidate con- fronts the first of his mul- tiple choices. He may or may not be unsettled by prelimin- ary instruction No. 5: . “You are to choose the ONE BEST answer to each question, even if other alternatives may have some truth in them.”

For the next couple of hours there. is little for an assistant presiding officer to do apart from thinking im- pure thoughts as he strolls among the He is present to ensure, as com- manded by his orders for the day, that “candidates shall not communicate with one another by writing signs or words or in any manner

whatever” (Rule 10).

In 20 years on this?

YOU’LL FIND

. ‘ patrol I have never spotted . .

\‘I

candidates communicating in any manner whatever, and would quickly turn away from such a scene. Half-way through someone raises his hand and asks to be escorted to the men’s washroom. I tell him he is old enough to go by himself thereby contra-

vening Rule 7: “No candidate

shall be permitted to leave the hall except under super- vision.” Scratch a professor, as Jerry Rubin says, and,

most mordant remark heard in Concovation Hall this year.

To be required to take part in such a travesty of intelu lect is to be filled with a loathing for examinations so intense that one forgets that in their time they were a great re form. Essentially they serve society as [a de- vice for divyinlg up its spoils — jobs, prizes, preferment, power. Divying up has to be done one way or another, and other ways of doing it are few and far from fine.

The most democratic is to run a lottery. When your

number comes up, you’re the

boss —— of the bank, of the gag, of the land. The least democratic is to run an aris- tocracy. When» you’re born into the right family, you’ve got it made. The trouble with lottery democracy, as with blueblood aritocracy and the varieties of cronyism in be- tween, is that its top people tend to be incompetent. So, for the sake of efficiency if not of justice, you run a meri- tocracy. The spoils go to the ablest, as picked — how else? by competitive examination.

Empires offer most incen- tives for efficiency: they have more to lose. Hence the route to power via examina- tion was opened first in China, 20 centuries ago. The quality of the Imperial Civil Service being thought to re- side in the rigor and impar- tiality of tier upon tier of tests as the power of the Em- pire was believed: to derive from the quality of Service, social criticism in China re- volved around the ritual of the examination chamber.

Wank An-shih writes in 1058 about the tricks played by» candidates: “Unworthy ones, by virtue of having learned petty devices of com- position, advance to positions of high officials.” The tradi- tional system buckled under

the weight of a millenium of

accumulated criticism, but only when Redl Guards rams paged through the academies 60 years later did Chinese meritocracy collapse.

Blueblood Aristocracy

you’ll find a cop. That is the.

VERSITY' OF PRINCE EDWARD-iade , i

. ‘2

A 00 P.

James anrs is professor of interna- tional relations at the University of Toronto. This article was originally published in the Toronto Daily Star.

but, until the 19th century, no mandarinate to make it run on merit. Instead a blueblood aristocracy glided through her colleges, torpid with port and corruption. In 1776, when 13 of her colonies declared their independence, the Earl of Eldon came down from Oxford: “What is the Heb- rew.” he asked, “for the place of a skull?” I replied: ‘Golgotha.’ ‘Who founded University Colle-ge?’ I stated (though, by the way, the point is something doubted) that King Alfred founded it, ‘Very good,’ said the exam- iner, ‘yourare competent for your degree.’ ” But not for running empires. Jefferson, who saw nepotism as a cause of the revolution, determin- ed it should not persist with- in the new republic. He pro- posed: to recruit in ruling class through examinations by which “twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually.” In the event, the British got the merit system; American got Tammany.

The Victorians used exam— inations as a lash for learn— ing, as they used the whip of hunger for production. “Without examination. all ef- forts are useless,” a board of commissioners at Oxford was told in 1852, “and no scheme of instruction has any per- ceptible effect.” This pro- position, then regarded as an axiom, has been under attack ever since.

Every educator can tick off points in the case against competitive examin a t i o n s, many believing in conclusive. First, their notorious unre- liability. Second their obvious unfairness. The facile, the neat, the complaint, the un- flappable are advantaged at the expense of candidates whose thoughts, not neces- sarily less worthy, tend to come more slowly, whose handwriting is sloppy, whose heart and mind rebel, whose nervous systems tend to let them down rather than pep them up. Thirdl, their suffo- cation of inquiry. ‘

All these are criticisms of, for and by examiners. They may want to change the sys- tem but they do not want to end it, no more than police- men want an end to prison. Abolition would deprive them of their power. “When the results or placed on the no-

‘tice boar ‘,” writes a young

British red'brick radical, “there is. no doubt where the real power lies. Examina- tions are the control centre for the manipulation of the lives of the students.”

That being so, why did| not students seize the control centre? Peasants rise against

‘ r oppressive t'axe s, , religious

minorities against persecu- tion, women against being denied the vote. But examin- ees did not denounce their ex— aminers, for fear of being failed.

That fear no longer fright— ens as it used to. The prizes seem less alluring now. There is a movement offering an alternative life-style to cush- ion the shock of alienation. University rhetoric and uni- versity reality draw daily more apart. A year ago the defiant ones surfaced at last. The student council at the University of British Colum- bia questioned “the educa- tional value of competition for marks, written examina- tions as a basis for grades, and ultimately the utility of any grading system.” A stu— dent at the University of Tor- onto ripped up his diploma before the startled gaze of convocation —— a deed more dramatic than self-destruc- tive as his degree remained intact even if his diploma did not. But at the same time a student at the University of Hull ripped up his exam- ination. It was like Luther at the doors of Wittenberg, Lenin at the Finland Station. The examinees’ revolt was under way.

Choice Is Two-Fold

And how shall we examin- ers react, those of us who brand the cattle on their way to market? The choice is not multiple but two-fold. Jacques Barzun has stated one: “We must stop blathering about sensitivity to the needs of others, and say instead: ‘I want a pupil who can read Burke’s Speech on Concilia, tion and solve problems in trigonometry. I want young

men and women who can read French prose and write Eng— lish.’ And having said these or similar things we must pas-s judgment on perfor- mance and let accomplish- ment be known, quite as if it had the importance of a re- cord in a track mee .”

David Hoffman states the other:

. . .All my students

Adams, Bixler, Brown,

The total roll . so many

Pretty girls, the lads

All promism' g! I’ve given them

For grades the letter Yogh (My favorite letter). ‘

Wonderful kids -— All Yoghs.

Good man Hoffman. Yogh plus.