The Fallacy of Exams

I have issues with Exams. Major ones. In my mind, the entire exam process is flawed.

See, exams force you to cram a huge amount of data into your short term memory, which is then regurgitated in a test setting, and then forgotten. These are either spewed forth as individual factoids, or as wrote learned essays. Neither tests your actual knowledge of the subject, nor your understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of the course. It's perfectly possible to do well in most papers just by aping the lecturer. Hell, if you go to tutorials, pay attention, and attend all the lectures, you can do damn well without ever having to do a reading. God knows it worked for me for most of my undergrad career.

The other thing that pisses me off about exams, is that it inherently denigrates the subjects by forcing you to completely deal with them in two or three hours. If a 13 week paper is so simple that the entire thing can be successfully summarised in a three hour exam, then why does it take 13 weeks to teach it? Exams force you to dumb down what you've learned into a form that can be recalled and used in a high pressure environment, and then forgotten. It completely loses all the complexities and details you've been taught, in favour of broad context statements. It essentially defeats the purpose of sitting the course. If it can be written in three hours, surely it can be taught in three hours?

TB