It gave them something to write about

Question b.

We gave the little darlings a Progress Test yesterday. I asked Glen to devise the test, while like lemmings, our pupils mostly opted for the same writing task, viz.

Which is more important, better grades or better knowledge, or are they the same thing?

It looks interesting enough superficially, but it fails as a question because grades are the result of testing knowledge. To say that one is more important than the other makes no real sense. The question ought to have been something like

Which is more useful? Theoretical or practical knowledge; or are both equally as important?

I’m not sure that this topic is any better because it leaves the particular field of knowledge unstated. In everyday life, for example, practical knowledge is clearly more useful.

An alternative question might be

Which is more useful: breadth of knowledge or breadth of experience? Or are both usefully applicable under the right circumstances?

Again, this probably isn’t really a good question since any knowledge or experience end up being relevant to their fields. In other words, the question needs to be tightened up again somehow. If I were to give it to our little darlings, I might set it in their futures.

I’ve never really considered the fact that it’s only at school or university that most of us get tested. There are a few professions such as accounting (all right, that’s the only one I know of) in which people continue to be examined, but most people are probably never tested. About as close as most of us would get would be an interview for a promotion, which could be described as an oral examination. The last test of a sort which I did was for the TEFL course I did in Zhuhai last year; before that, it would’ve been the oral exam for my doctorate in 1995.

In my current job, I’ve been promoted as a matter of experience (although that hasn’t really taken me that far); though I also know of an instance of someone being promoted as a matter of knowledge without an iota of experience. I found the incident to be moderately galling.

To stick the tail of this particular snake in its mouth, it’s typical to find that most of the little darlings end up writing answers on the same topic in tests. Although the topic above dominated, a few chose other topics in which to display their minuscule intellects.

Would you kill one healthy person so you can save ten people?

This one got some oddish answers, although I think that in one instance, what was arse backwards in English would’ve been arse forwards in Chinese.

A couple of kids attempted

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

but only one mentioned evolution, which is what I would’ve done myself. One tried

Is it ok to have a serious relationship in high school?

but misunderstood the import of the question.

I think the answers which my current pupils generally have a better structure than others I’ve had to mark in the past. A low level of English can make it difficult to see much virtue in a piece of writing, but I’ve seen plenty of instances of writing whose lack of coherence and cohesion can’t always be attributed to an inadequate range of vocabulary, laziness and a minuscule intellect also often being in evidence.