The Limitations of Marking
Nom only schools and universities, but also professional bodies and business men, tend more and more to shirk the responsi- bility of personal judgement and to substitute a system of marks based on skill in solving problems, writing essays, or meeting the demands of intelligence tests. Personal prejudice, it is hoped, is thus eliminated ; but a fundamental fallacy creeps in. The nature of a personality, and the scope and activity of an intellect, cannot be adequately described by a set of numbers, however " just " the marking, and the difficulties of using numbers to express qualities of character and mind which can only be described in words are so great,
and the results so grotesque, that the value of the whole examination system is questioned, and questioned most pro- foundly by those who have most to do with it.
The present volume is issued by that distinguished Exami- nations Enquiry Committee which has already attracted attention by its very useful Examination of Examinations.
About half the book is occupied by Sir Michael Sadler's history of scholarship examinations in England. He contrasts free, but State-controlled, education with the older English system of expensive education coupled with fairly liberal scholarships. His essay provides admirable food for thought for those who, in their enthusiasm for development of education, uncon- sciously assume that the State should be not only the servant of the common will but also its conscience and its mentor.
The comparative liberality, broad-mindedness and adapt- ability of British education at present are largely due to the work of educational institutions which were founded and made independent of the State by the generosity of private benefactors. An adequate system of scholarships, rather than free education for all, would enable us to preserve the independence of our schools and colleges without making education wholly a class privilege. Some of the dangers of an educational system directly controlled by the Government are revealed incidentally in an essay (on Examinations and Social Needs) in which Dr. Delisle Burns shows how the examination system has grown up with the social system, and argues that it must adjust itself to social and industrial changes. " We need," he says, " men and women not so much stored with knowledge of the past as capable of facing unprecedented situations." In a limited sense, this capacity can be estimated by psychological tests, as Professor Cyril Burt shows in a later essay, and the spreading alarm at the demonstrated unreliability of traditional methods of examining is leading, as Dr. Ballard says, to an increasing use of " fool- proof " intelligence tests in the Special Place Examination.
There is, however, a danger that if immediate social needs
are given too much consideration, and if too much importance is attached to these tests, other valuable qualities will be
overlooked. Civilisation is not wholly a matter of adapta- bility, and the State and industrial system should be made for man, not man for the system ; the boy who comes from a home where he has learned a sense of social responsi- bility, moral integrity, and aesthetic good taste, may be a more desirable member of a school, and of society in general, than some persons of higher I.Q. To develop valuable qualities and to disentangle theta from the superficial effects of the class-system is difficult. Sir Philip Hartog comes nearest to this problem when he discusses the generally admitted failure of our schools to teach " English," and the failure of our examiners to find a reliable way of marking essays. Sir
Philip. Hartog has some hard but sound things to say about the Piffie Theory of essay writing, which makes the writing of English an imitation of the trivialities of Charles Lamb whose " imperfect intellect " was " content with fragments and scattered pieces of truth."
Clear and articulate thought, a concern for moral principles, and a .capacity to understand, express, and judge the mood and quality of mind implicit in a piece of writing, are im- portant qualities in the citizen of a democratic State, and are not-easily tested in examinations. The present volume shows that some of our leading authorities are alive to the short- comings of our present system : they may be powerless to amend them until the rest of us choose to help, but the fact that such lively and judicious criticism can come from the top, rather than be born and stifled lower down, is itself a tribute to the system.
MICHAEL ROBERTS'.
Previous page
