While pretty much everyone I know spent his or her summer interning, working or lounging at the beach, I spent mine studying for the LSAT.
And as we have progressed into the school year, I have continued preparing for the test. But as I get deeper into preparing for the exam, I have started to ask myself "What is the point? What will this test prove?"
Ever since we were six years old we have had to take test after test, year after year. It seems that everything we do in school is to help us prepare for yet another test.
We learn material, get tested on it, and then we forget what we have learned. I have been thinking about this a lot and have come up with my own philosophy on education.
In the real world, we won't have to take tests. We will have paperwork, essays and presentations. So why do we focus so hard on taking exams in school? Isn't the purpose of school to prepare us for the real world? All tests really assess is our ability to memorize, and the second the test is over, we lose some of the knowledge we learned to prepare for the test.
Maybe there is a better way to measure our knowledge on a subject.
Think about where your life is headed after college. I am going to law school, and then will hopefully become a lawyer. My time working will be comprised of writing case briefings, going to meetings, giving presentations and speaking in the courtroom - none of which have to do with taking tests. In my opinion, it would be more beneficial to be evaluated in my classes by writing papers and giving presentations.
After all, that is what I will be doing when I graduate. And I don't think it matters if you don't plan on being a lawyer, I'm not aware of many jobs that require you to take tests consistently.
A lot of what we learn here at DePauw accumulates. It builds upon other knowledge we have learned. I am a communications major, so I incorporate information I have learned from my other classes into the classes I am in now. That is better shown through writing as opposed to answering multiple-choice questions.
However, I will admit that there are several courses that cannot be assessed without tests. Science, languages and math, would be hard to accurately measure without taking an exam. But for other courses, papers and presentations would work better.
Furthermore, in this era of advanced technology such as smart-phones, iPads, tablets and laptops, any information we may need is always instantly available at our fingertips.
Should we really have to memorize anything when in the real world we will always have technology by our sides?
Think about it, how accurately do tests really assess your knowledge on a particular subject? And how will taking tests prepare you for the real world?
So I propose that we abandon the status quo of assessing our knowledge by taking tests. I encourage teachers and professors to stop testing us and instead have us do presentations and write papers. That would truly prepare us for the real world.
- Nicole Dobias is a junior from Fishers, Ind., majoring in communication.
