Exams — Whose idea was it anyway?
With many exams starting last week Senior Lecturer, Dr Simon Sneddon decided to look into where exams actually came from and why we still use them today:
The answer to the first part of the question [whose idea was it?] initially seems relatively easy. Professor Derk Bodde, writing in 2004 for the Committee on Asiatic Studies in American Education states that:
In the year 165 B.C., China inaugurated what later became a widespread system of competitive government examinations.
For those who think that exams are tough today, spare a thought for those taking them in China in the 19th Century:
The examinations took place within huge walled enclosures, inside of which were thousands of small brick cells, laid out in straight rows like the houses of a town. Each cell contained a bench and table, and housed a nervous candidate. Every precaution was taken to prevent cheating. Candidates were searched before entering the enclosure, carefully watched while the examination was in progress, and not permitted to leave until it was over. Each examination commonly lasted several days and was of unbelievable difficulty. In 1889, for example, out of more than 14,000 candidates taking the examination in Peking, only slightly over 300 passed. The reward for success, however, was entry into the honored ranks of the mandarins who governed the country.
A pass rate of 2 per cent seems almost impossible today, in the era of institutional targets and league tables, but it was quite normal for the Chinese Civil Service exams.
Most sources seem to agree that formal examinations started out as a way of ensuring that civil servants met a particular standard — such systems were adopted in the USA in 1883 (Bodde, 2004), and in the UK in 1806 by the East India Company as a way of testing their administrators.
Lu and Needham (1963)[1] however, say that the “germ of the idea” can be traced back to the code of Hammurabi, over 4,000 years ago, and have their origins in examinations for medical professionals.
In terms of University education, Bodde says:
“In the universities of Europe, written examinations seem to have been unheard of before 1702″
and Lu & Needham agree to this, linking the introduction to Richard Bentley, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Bentley’s examination system was not adopted by the wider University however. Bentley is also mentioned by Trinity College fellow W W Rouse Ball, in his 1889 book “A History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge“[2] where (on p193) we writes: We are perhaps apt to think that an examination conducted by written papers is so natural that the custom is of long continuance. But I can find no record of any (in Europe) earlier than those introduced by Bentley at Trinity in 1702
Christopher Stray,[3]on the other hand traces the origin back further, and points out that Rouse Ball himself later cast doubt on the 1702 date. Ball, in his 1899 book Notes on the History of Trinity College Cambridge[4] quotes an earlier source which suggests that written examinations had formed part of the College teats at Trinity since 1560.
Trinity College does seem to be the source of formal written examinations, and in 1765[5] William Powell, Master of St John’s College, Cambridge, instituted a second series of College examinations. Ten years later, reformer John Jebb tried to have this extended to a system of annual examinations for all undergraduates, but this was rejected several times.
So we now (sort of) know the origin of formal written examinations. Why have they remained so popular centuries (or millennia) later?
The simple answer appears to be a fear that a move away from this type of examination would lead to increased dishonest behaviour — buying coursework online, collusion, plagiarism and so on. This has not stopped some faculties and institutions ditching the formal end-of-year exam entirely — to predictable howls of protest from the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph in 2012:
“No-exam university courses fuel rise in first class degrees”
In the three undergraduate modules for which I am module leader (Environmental Law and Organised Crime in Year 2 and Terrorism in year 3) I designed-out the end-of-year exam a long time ago. I replaced it in two modules with a time-constrained, take-away paper of 48 hours or 72 hours, coupled with a longer standard essay. There has been no “dumbing down” as critics cited in the Telegraph allege (and the students will attest to the fact that the TCA is not a soft option), and there has been no “grade inflation” either.
I firmly believe that the modern world has no place for the memory-test style of closed book exam, and that the ability to use all possible resources to find information and apply it in a short period of time is far more useful to a student after they graduate, than the ability to trot out the rule in Rylands and Fletcher.
What do you think?
[1] Lu, G-D and Needham, J., 1963, China and the Origin of Examinations in Medicine, Proc R Soc Med. 1963 Feb; 56(2): 63–70.
[2] Ball, W. W. R. (1889) History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
[3] Christopher Stray (2001) The Shift from Oral to Written Examination: Cambridge and Oxford 1700–1900, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 8:1, 33–50, DOI: 10.1080/09695940120033243
[4] Ball, W. W. R. (1899) Notes on the History of Trinity College Cambridge (London, Macmillan)
[5] ‘The University of Cambridge: The age of Newton and Bentley (1660–1800)’, in A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 3, the City and University of Cambridge, ed. J P C Roach (London, 1959), pp. 210–235. British History Onlinehttp://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol3/pp210-235 [accessed 06 May 2016]
Originally published at blogs.northampton.ac.uk on May 6, 2016.
