We might marvel at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years, educationists have still failed to devise anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite.They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell nothing about a person’s true ability and aptitude.
我们可能会惊叹于各个研究领域所取得的进步，但测试一个人的知识和能力的方法却仍然像以前一样原始。这么多年过去了，教育学家们仍然没能设计出比考试更有效、更可靠的方法，这确实令人感到不可思议。考试可能是测试记忆力的好方法，也可能是测试在极端压力下快速工作的诀窍的好方法，但它们对一个人的真正能力和资质却一无所知。
As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none. That is because so much depends on them. They are the mark of success or failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother dies. Little things like that don’t count: the exam goes on. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. Can we wonder at the increasing number of ‘drop-outs’: young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students?A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memories. Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce cramming. They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedom. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress.
作为焦虑的制造者，考试是首屈一指的。这是因为很多事情都取决于考试。它们是我们社会成败的标志。你的整个未来都可能在某一天被决定。你身体不舒服，或者你母亲去世，这些都不重要。这样的小事并不重要：考试还在继续。没有人能够在惶恐不安或彻夜难眠的情况下全力以赴，然而这正是考试制度所期望的。从孩子入学的那一刻起，他就进入了一个恶性竞争的世界，在这个世界里，成功和失败都有明确的定义和衡量标准。我们能对越来越多的 "辍学者 "感到惊讶吗：这些年轻人甚至还没有开始职业生涯，就已经被视为彻底的失败者？我们会对学生的自杀率感到惊讶吗？考试制度却没有做到这一点。教学大纲硬性规定了必须学习的内容，鼓励学生死记硬背。考试不能激励学生广泛阅读，反而限制了他的阅读量；考试不能使学生寻求更多的知识，反而诱发了填鸭式学习。考试降低了教学水平，因为它剥夺了教师的一切自由。教师本身也常常以考试成绩作为评判标准，他们不是在教授自己的学科，而是在训练学生掌握他们所鄙视的考试技巧。最成功的考生并不总是受过最好教育的人，他们是在压力下工作的技巧方面训练有素的人。
The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. They get tired and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge’s decision on you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner’s. There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person’s true abilities. It is cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: ‘I were a teenage drop-out and now I are a teenage millionaire.’
考试成绩的好坏往往取决于某个匿名考官的主观评价。考官也是人。他们会累，会饿，会犯错误。然而，他们必须在有限的时间内批改成堆潦草的答卷。他们的工作压力与考生不相上下。他们的话很有分量。在法官做出决定后，你有权上诉，但在考官做出决定后就没有了。肯定有许多更简单、更有效的方法来评估一个人的真实能力。有人说，考试不过是考试机构的一种盈利手段，这是否有点无耻？归根结底，这就是问题所在。对考试制度最好的评价，莫过于最近写在墙上的这则文盲留言： 我曾是辍学少年，现在是百万富翁。
