There are actually lots of these types of high school exams on line
somewhere. But thanks for this example. I agree, entirely, that our
students (with very rare exceptions) couldn't pass this test even in
their graduating year. And in 1932, you entered teacher's college
directly from high school. Now, in Ontario, you need at least a
three-year BA to apply. Nipissing attracts as many students as it does
because we have a faculty of education on campus here and the students
get a leg up if they pass certain prescribed courses during their
undergrad years.
You mention how these old tests could be used to chart changes in
educational standards. The same is true for old textbooks. Even
textbooks from the '60s (at any level) were so much more intensive -- so
much less 'entertaining.' Now you have to have pictures and charts
and boxed biographies to break the page up so it doesn't look so
daunting. Each new edition has more fluff... My mother blames
Sesame Street for the short attention spans of today's students.
For sure, Brown attracts more high-calibre students than small places
such as Nipissing (we're four hours north of Toronto). I suspect that
no more than 10 of my 150 first year phil students are reading anything
besides the text and the assigned stuff. I occasionally let the class
go twenty minutes early and invite those who would like to continue to
stay. Out of 80, I have perhaps 6 or 8. Hard to know, of course, how
much of this is my fault for not turning them on to the ideas more, but
other profs seem to have the same concerns.
This brings me to another question. Who are we doing this for? In
designing our classes, should we work to satisfy the needs of the bright
ones? Or to meet the needs of the rest? Out of my 150 first year
students, only 3 or 4 are philosophy majors. The rest will never take
another philosophy class. They're just satisfying their requirement for
a humanities course as they head for their business degree. Sorry for
all this nattering. It's just that time of the year, I guess.
And why were teachers colleges called "Normal Schools"? Even here in
North Bay that was the case.
Back to writing my second term test...
Ursula
John Wager wrote:
Exams are fascinating. It astounds me that few educationalists have studied exams. They should be a very good way to understand how educationals standards have changed over the years, but I'm not able to get very far if I start asking about what kinds of exams colleges gave over Aristotle in years gone by; nobody seems to have made a collection of them aside from individual faculty members.
What got me interested in exams is coming across the 1932 "Entrance Exam" for Chicago Normal College in a used book store. Many college students could not pass parts of it as an EXIT exam from college today, especially if the questions were not from their major field. (I put the exam on line; it's now here: http://academics.triton.edu/uc/1932test.html .
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