Long Term Damage of Tests
“In theory, tests
are merely what their name implies: tests of what you've learned in the class.
In theory you shouldn't have to prepare for a test in a class any more than you
have to prepare for a blood test.”
And:
“In practice… things
are so different that hearing this explanation of how classes and tests are
meant to work is like hearing the etymology of a word whose meaning has changed
completely.”
No
surprise then that this is how we go through school and college:
“For me, as for
most students, the measurement of what I was learning completely dominated
actual learning in college.”
But
isn’t this just a cost of doing business, a way to get a job? No, says Graham:
“The most damaging
thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class.
It was learning to get good grades.”
Huh?
How can learning to get good grades be a damaging thing?! Lamentable and
deplorable, yes. But how is it damaging?
Graham
elaborates:
“The problem is
that nearly all tests given to students are terribly hackable. Most people
who've gotten good grades know this.”
Study
the class notes, not multiple books on the subject. Look up the last few years’
question papers. You know how the game is played. It’s all about hacking the
test. So much so that when it comes to college admissions:
“Whole industries
have grown up to hack it.”
Yes,
yes, you say impatiently, but how is it damaging? Aha:
“The worst thing
it does is to train you that the way to win is by hacking bad tests. This is a
much subtler problem that I didn't recognize until I saw it happening to other
people.”
As a
venture capitalist, Graham says he interviews many hopefuls. He tells them to
build a company that has growth, preferably in revenue, otherwise in users. On
how to grow users, most interviewees think of ideas like a big launch, lots of
publicity, celebrity endorsement etc. No, no, said Graham:
“The way you get
lots of users is to make the product really great.”
This
would almost always elicit a “Wow! Really?” response.
“Why did founders
tie themselves in knots doing the wrong things when the answer was right in
front of them? Because that was what they'd been trained to do. Their education
had taught them that the way to win was to hack the test.”
Most
fresh graduates believe that “the first thing you did, when facing any kind of
challenge, was to figure out what the trick was for hacking the test”!
And
that is why Graham considers the longer-term impact of the whole testing system
to be “damaging”. I’d never thought of things that way until now.
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