Why So Many Exams: A Marxist Response By Bertell Ollman

The cafeteria was more hysteric than usual. The PSAT scores for sophomore year had finally be revealed, and everyone at my table was fervently comparing scores. Some of us were pleased, most were dejected. “How could I have gotten a lower verbal score than my friend?” I thought enviously to myself. “I know I am much better at English than she is.” This thought had me vexed me for the rest of the day, and though my friend had done nothing wrong, I was not particularly fond of her at the moment. Another one of my friends fretted that her score had to be higher in order to match her 4.0 GPA, and we rolled our eyes wondering why she cared if she had automatic admission anyway. Nearly all of us left school that day with one thought in our heads—that

In his article “Why So Many Exams? A Marxist Response” Bertell Ollman, a political science professor at New York University, states that difficult and stressful tests lead students to believe that the score they receive is the one they deserve and that it is an accurate measure of their ability. Making such assumptions is unhealthy as it causes feelings of guilt and self-pity. This kind of thinking stays with students throughout their lives and follows them into their careers (516). Gregory Cizek, a professor at the University of North Carolina, argues that standardized tests are the only way to properly measure ability and decide who gets into college. In his article “Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing” Cizek supports his perspective on testing by stating, “[T]hese kinds of decisions are unavoidable; each should be based on sound information; and the information should be combined in some deliberate, considered fashion” (505). However, just because tests are meant to assess everyone fairly, that does not mean they always do. In his article, Ollman refers to an experiment in which two men send essays to be scored by 200 teachers. “They got back 142 grades,” Ollman says. “For one paper, the grades ranged from 50 to 99; for the other, the grades went from 64 to 99” (515). This incredibly wide range shows the grading system is not fair or an accurate method of measuring intelligence or ability. If students are taught to blindly trust their test scores, when they get lower scores than their peers, they start to feel as if they are not good enough. Students constantly share and compare test scores, which leads to them “viewing each other as competitors for the best grades” (Ollman 517). Feeling this way can lead to overexertion, stress, depression, and other mental and physical problems, and