9134 in the collection
Final Exam Blues
Ohanian Comment: I really like Simpson's idea of having kids plan visits, using bus schedules, etc. Not phony schedules but real schedules for a real purpose. Now this is a skill we all need. Next, maybe he can have students figure out the best drug plan to recommend to their grandparents just entering Social Security.
By Steven W. Simpson, Ph.D.
I hate final exams. Always have. I hated them when I was in school and I hate them now, teaching school. It just seems like some kind of medieval kid torture that is left over from the bad old days. We used to whack kids with yardsticks. We can’t do that any more, so we torture them with hour and a half, brain-killing memorization trauma.
Really. When was the last time you actually used any of the skills required to pass a final exam? Let’s see, I went to five years of graduate school at the University of Washington, earning two graduate degrees. Never had to take a test. Wrote a zillion papers, attended stimulating seminars, learned a pile about communications. Never took one test.
The undergraduate dweebs took finals, but in grad school, no tests. I guess that is the line. When you manage to claw your way out of undergraduate into graduate education, they figure you are old enough or smart enough to be free of finals torture. It’s like puberty, painful going through it, and a bad memory the rest of your life.
Tests, generally, are icky, but final exams are the smelly worst. We spend 20 weeks working with the kids, helping them read and write and think. We teach them to plan and organize and function effectively in the real world. Then, after all of those weeks and months preparing them for reality, we drop a nightmare on them, an unreal, scary, grade-determining collection of generally useless information to memorize and spew back on enough bubble sheets to clear-cut a forest the size of Iowa.
I teach special education English. Our principal asked every teacher to give a final. Fine. I like my principal and want to support what she is doing. So I had to get creative. My final was really not a test. I had my kids write an essay in a similar manner to the one they will have to write next year to pass our state’s standardized test, something they must do in order to graduate. I figured this was close enough to something useful, and would still go along with everyone giving finals. It worked, but I still hate finals.
So, if they make me King of Curriculum for a day, what will I do? Nice thought. Gets the juices moving. What to do? OK, instead of taking three days and running two hour finals in each class, let’s take a week and run a six hour final in each class. Let’s give the kids a final that includes visits to a community college, a four year college, a technical school and a retail store.
Let’s have them figure out a bus schedule that takes them around to these places. They have to get brochures and application materials to all three. They have to speak with someone and take notes. They have to fill out at least one of the applications, including a typed cover letter. They have to type a summary of their trip and tell you which place they visited seemed like the best option for them and why. Something like this works for me.
A change in our perception of why kids are in school seems appropriate. Kids are not in school to learn how to memorize a bunch of stuff and spend an hour and a half spitting it back to us. They are not in school to see how much information they can cram onto two note cards they get to use during the test. They are not in school to learn to take tests. They are in school to learn to take life, and do something useful and fulfilling with it. So let’s make something related to useful and fulfilling our final.
Well, I feel better. Finals are over for the moment. I got to do a little venting. Monday we have some Shakespeare actors coming in to do drama workshops with the kids. There is a lot of snow in the mountains and we are going cross country skiing this afternoon.
Life is good.
— Steven W. Simpson
Simpson Communications
2006-01-28
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 366
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
