Every student knows the sinking feeling of sitting in an exam hall, proctors gliding by, gingerly worrying about an unseen question staring back at them. With the recent announcement that this University will increase the number of first-year exams in the humanities, it’s well worth the opportunity to reconsider the value of formal examinations in the arts.
On the one hand, examinations make it far harder to cheat than assessed tasks, as students are given one of several possible questions, and essays are written under the cordon sanitaire of the exam hall. They reduce the possibility of ‘contract’ cheating or students relying on AI to work. It is unavoidable that as AI becomes more common, so will cheating. To that end, the preservation of integrity and fairness requires the university to take action, and examinations are perhaps the only available recourse for academics.
Exams are also valuable for students who find it challenging to devote time to completing assignments. Many students, burdened by the weight of work or caring, find it hard to devote time to their studies. The short time of an exam means work can be done quickly. The increase in exams also imparts a levelling effect, especially in areas like first year Ancient History, one of the subjects set to gain a final exam. Sources can be harder to come by in some areas than others, and setting a single exam question, or a few, would mean that students would not be unduly disadvantaged by writing an essay on an area with a lack of primary material.
However, these benefits aside, the over-examinification of the humanities is a negative turn of events worth more interrogation. The Arts degree, which claims to present itself as the tool of a liberal education where students can think for themselves and understand information, is not a course suited to exams.
How can one be expected to truly understand and discuss complex questions of philosophy, or history, literature, or art in a one or two hour paper? Scholars spend decades prodding and thinking about ideas and events. How can we expect our students to truly appreciate complex ideas coloured with variation if they are to be reduced to the conveyor belt indelicacy of an examination?
The necessity to memorise dates and vomit out an essay on orders, like a Brazen Head responding to a foolhardy provocation, is a very serious problem that exams provoke. Students don’t get a grasp of the material if they are only able to recall the date of a battle or the pithiest of Hamlet’s observations; exams take away the opportunity for students to study secondary sources or to consider the sources in detail.
Essays, in-class-presentations, or discussion boards are simply a better way of assessing things that don’t have a simple answer. Humanities subjects are about making an argument. Can you really make an argument with a cramp in your hand and the corner of your eye on your wristwatch?
Perhaps the greatest issue that arises from exams is the anxiety of taking part. Going into a cold, echoing hall amidst a sea of faceless desks, sharpening pencils, and turning cold pages, students fill themselves with the fear that up to half of their grades are dependent on a single exam. It is such a stressful proposition that people often lose sleep over exams. The truth is that some people just don’t test well. They are very intelligent and understand the course content, but give them an intentionally blank page and a clock, and they clam up.
Of course, it would be impossible to suggest that exams be done away with entirely. That has been the siren-song of the undergraduate since the first Ming bureaucrat struggled with their eight-legged essay. It is simply impossible to expect or assume that formal examinations can be replaced, since they are fair and practical ways of examining candidates.
Rather, we can lament their increased place as a method of looking at first-year humanities undergrads, especially considering that in some cases up to 50% of a mark is dependent on exam success. It is reasonable to hold examinations, but it is regrettable that they are going to hang over first years like a sword of Damocles.
Exams are unavoidable, but we can at least take a moment to reflect on their place in the Arts course.
