Good God above, am I the only one who routinely took tests which required you to apply the knowlege you’d gained? The way most tests I ever took were structured, a large percentage of the questions were straight up knowing the material. A smaller percentage required you to understand the concepts behind the material, and use those concepts to solve a problem. Then, to really seperate the wheat from the chaff, there was a small percentage of questions that required you to combine multiple concepts to find the answer. That’s how a well-madeout test is: the bulk of it is just checking to see if you learned the material, then you get into how well you really understand the material. That’s why so many students hate essay questions; those are the ones you have to understand and apply underlying concepts to answer.
And, of course, we also took a whole lot of practical exams that tested how well we could perform certain tasks. In French, we had oral exams, where you had to carry on a fairly complex conversation with the teacher. In business, we had to type up letters and reports and such. In phys ed, we had to run laps and do situps and play basketball. When I took EMT training, we had to splint arms and legs, bandage wounds, and evaluate patients and write up reports.
I can’t say that my testing experiences have been useless or pointless in any way, really.
Exams are, in fact, a tried and true method of continuous assessment. There are other methods, such as homework, but they have obvious drawbacks and they are basically another form of examination anyway.
So the OP hardly demonstrates that exams are unnecessary. If anything, M-G’s plea for “continuous assessment” demonstrates why exams are so valuable.
If the exam is structured properly, it will test if a student can apply their knowledge. Not every test is in the form of a Scan-Tron multiple choice bubble test.
Well in absence of proof of cheating, it is safe to assume that they either worked hard or are pretty smart.
I agree that standardized tests are not the be-all end-all judge of a persons potential. But how do you propose a person should be evaluated for their ability to perform a particular job?
The problem is that students who do get caught for cheating don’t end up graduating college (not with intact 4.0 GPAs). So, the students with 4.0 GPAs either worked hard, are pretty smart, or cheated successfully. Ofcourse, a combination is more likely, but not neccessary.
Well… for someone straight out of school, auditions. That’s how casinos hire dealers, experienced or not, and how spas hire massage therapists. For fields requiring more complex knowledge, maybe a few days on the job at a “training wage”, while supervisors and coworkers evaluate them.
Experienced people? Um, ever here of a thing called a reference check?
In case you hadn’t noticed, MG, we are all born without the ability to read or write. We all - at least in the UK - have the opportunity for a good education.
Assume what you like. But without any evidence to the contrary, it is generally asumed that people who consistantly do well in school are doing so on their own merits.
What else do you assume? That the 2.0s are the smart ones and the 4.0s are the dummies who cheated?
Give me a break. What the hell is a company going to do? Let every jerk who applies try their hand in the courtroom, in the doctors office, or on a trading floor? Companies receive hundreds or thousands of resumes. It costs a lot of money hire and train someone who doesn’t work out.
You want to get out of Shiatzu massage and get a job with a company, here’s what you do:
-Go to the best schools you can get into
-Get the best grades you can
-Get internships working for the most well know companies you can find in your field (General Electric, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, whoever)
-Try to meet as many people in whatever career field you are interested in
To be a licenced Civil Engineer you have to graduate from an accredited university, pass the EIT(Engineer In Training exam), work as a trainee for 4 years then take the PE (Professional Engineer exam). By the time you take the PE Exam you should be able to take the pressure of an exam. If you fail you can take it over.
This percedure is needed to ensure that the engineers that are working are competant. I’m sure that some people who would be competant engineers don’t make it. I don’t know of another way to make sure everyone in the field knows what they are doing.
I work in a small computer animation company. I’m the IT guy. I am put under a lot of pressure in short infrequent bursts when the boss (a graphic artist) makes a bad decision, or something goes snafu. Often given the contract nature of the work, peoples wages are resting on me quickly solving problems.
However I don’t regard these situations as stress-causing in themselves. After all i’m put in them, more often than not, by someone else. When the consequences of my actions or decisions put me in such a situation however, I do feel stress, but when I have no control over a situation, how can I have any responsibility? And where theres no responsibility theres no stress.
IMHO if you feel stressed due to a situation that someone else has put you in, you are simply receiving their stressful feelings.
Anyway the stress thing is a bit of a tangent, I wasn’t trying to make a point of it, per se.
I only think that continual assessment is better than examinations, and could replace the exam system throughout school and higher education. And if it was properly done, could lead to better social inclusion for the poor (who can’t afford to buy books or spend time reading with their children.).
We already have continual assessments. Class work, homework, and exams are all set up to provide teachers and administrators with the tools to make continual assessments of a students progress. The only exam that doesn’t fit into the continual assessment mode is the final exam.
Or that a significant percentage of the 2.0’s are actually highly intelligent and know what they’ve learned in a practical way, but the way their brain processes information is such that they would have difficulty regurgitating that information on a piece of paper.
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But companies do this all the time anyway. That’s kind of the idea behind the 90-day probationary period (which I think is a crock but that’s another thread). At least my way, the people the person would be working with could have a chance to assess the prospective employee and give the boss feedback on whether this is someone who will work out with some training, or if they’re a complete putz who should not be hired on a permanent basis.
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Two things:
1)Why in God’s name would I want to do that? One of my instructors and a few of my co-students have left “jobs with companies” to go into massage because they were burned out with the rat race and wanted to do something actually would feel good about doing. My Business Practices instructor was pulling down $250K per year selling insurance, burned out after doing it for over a decade, went back to school to get his certification as a massage therapist, and now owns his own massage clinic.
I’ve been noticing in your posts that you’re reacting to me as though I were a working therapist, and not a student. You might want to try developing your reading comprehension skills a bit before you reply to posts.
BTW, both my Shiatsu and Musculoskeletal Anatomy finals were cakewalks. I was sweating both of them because I did so poorly on the midterms, but I guess re-studying the older info and spending the extra time studying the more recent stuff paid off for me.
Now I just have to get through the second semester, then sit for the national exam…
That may be well and true. I achieved well below a 3.0 in my undergrad degree, however by all other indications, I am extremly intelligent. But the point is that GPA (and now SAT and GMAT scores) are one criteria that companies use to select employees. When companies recieve thousands of resumes for each position, they need some way to pare that down to a manageable number of people to interview.
I agree that the 90 day probationary period is a crock of shit. First of all, it takes a good 6-12 months to really learn your way around a position and how to work in a new job. Second, a company can really let you go in 1 to any number of days.
But realistically, you can’t give everyone who applies a 90 day trial to see how well they work. You still need a way to pare down all those applicants to a reasonible number of potential new hires.
I’m not saying you would, but my advice is applicable for every field. I assume to do massage, you need certain qualifications. Customers don’t care about how smart you think you are. If you can’t pass the basic certifications, whether it’s the Shiatzu exam, the PE or the bar exam, they won’t want to do business with you.
I’ll work on my freakin psychic powers too while I’m at it. I’m reacting to you as if you were someone who knows as much about the business world as I know about Shiatzu massage.
Exams measure progress, and they do it subjectively for the most part. If we didn’t have exams, it would be purely subjective on the teacher’s part whether you passed or not, and ghods help you if you get crossways with that teacher during the term.
And even if they are nothing more than “measuring someones capacity to do such-and-such a job?”, what’s wrong with that? It starts preparing children for the real world, which is nothing but one test after another.