Exams offered illusion of objectivity

Re: “B.C. admissions could be at risk,” March 15.

The letter-writer put forth the case for standard examinations as a way to fairly compare students from one district to another. There was a time when I would have agreed with everything he says.

I graduated from high school in 1963, when all Canadian provinces had rigid examination systems, and I loved it. By 1967, I had become a teacher and I delighted in training students to write these examinations.

But slowly, year by year, I began to realize that they were not as objective as they seemed. In Manitoba, the top marks tended to go to the city schools that attract the more experienced and the better teachers.

High school graduation rates in rural communities, and particularly in the First Nations in the North, were abysmally low. I encountered many talented and able students who simply were not good at taking examinations and never got the recognition that they deserved.

When the examinations disappeared, the school system gradually changed, as teachers began to modify their courses and take into account the interests and needs of their students. The education of the best students improved immensely, as opportunities arose for them to go beyond the fixed curriculum.

The writer is right that this makes it difficult to compare students. He is wrong in his belief that the standardized examination system made such comparisons possible. It offered only the illusion of objectivity. In reality, student comparisons were as flawed then as they are today.

John Barsby Winnipeg