I’m writing this article instead of studying for a final exam, of which I have too many. It seems as if the natural progression of any course at U of T involves a looming final exam at its conclusion. There, students are crammed into some sterile dystopian exam room and forced to regurgitate information from memory (most of which was crammed into their heads in the days before) for two or three hours. While exams make sense for subjects that involve routine testing for many in the humanities, they just seem redundant. All year long, we are graded on essays and coursework, only to have our fates decided in a few hours of furious writing. Exams are often unnecessary, unreflective, and unhelpful towards a humanities education.
Many exams in the humanities are simply in-class essays and nothing else. Often, two or three essays are assigned to us and we are allotted a short amount of time to write them. The quality of these essays is generally much lower than what is written during an actual research paper. So what is the point of even bothering going through with this? Other than the fact that we have to write a final exam, what qualifiable difference is there that makes final exams necessary? Students who cannot come up with good ideas on the spot or who require extensive editing for their writing are at a natural disadvantage. Even though they may eventually be able to write superior essays than their peers, they will receive a worse mark.
[pullquote]All year long, we are graded on essays and coursework, only to have our fates decided in a few hours of furious writing. Exams are often unnecessary, unreflective, and unhelpful towards a humanities education.[/pullquote]
Many final exams in the humanities are unreflective of the actual nature of study. If I pursued graduate study in history, I would be expected to produce research essays. Essays are the largest component of the work done throughout the year yet for the final exam everything changes. The mere fact that exam essays are necessarily rush jobs and often overly-generalized means that they require a different skill set a what is needed to succeed in the humanities. Although it can be argued that quick thinking is a necessary academic skill set to develop I hardly think it outranks or is even equal to the skill sets tested in actual research papers. But somehow, in the grand scheme of a course, final exams most often outweigh all other coursework.
It is a common fact that students cram in the lead-up to exams, but for those of us who need to write essays, the cramming takes on a whole new level of pointlessness. It is not that the work is too difficult (because for all disciplines, exams are difficult) but rather that cramming for these potential essays we are going to write does nothing to further our education. A culminating assignment, more research, or more heavily weighted coursework are reasonable alternatives to a final exam and might actually be of more service to our education going forward. If the purpose of university is to gain an education, then the most important test for students should help them develop a more discernible skill in their particular field.
