Harvard Flunks Final Exams

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Harvard Flunks Final Exams

In a world with no absolutes, why bother with testing?

When graded next to their international counterparts, American students rank near the bottom in science, math and literacy scores. And it’s only getting worse. As we reported a few years ago, an International Adult Literacy Survey found that Americans educated in the 1950s placed second against international competition. American students in the 1960s came in third—in the 1970s, fifth.

And those educated during the 1990s had plummeted to 14th place on the international scale.

One way to avoid these declining scores, Harvard now seems to be saying, is to do away with exams altogether. Until recently, unless a professor received permission in advance to waive the final exam, it was assumed that each course would have a test at the end of the semester.

Not anymore. As of this September, according to National Review Online, unless a teacher officially informs the registrar that he or she intends to end their course with an exam, the administration will assume the teacher will not administer one.

It’s been trending this way for some time. According to Jay M. Harris, the dean of undergraduate education, out of 1,137 undergraduate-level courses this past spring, only 259 scheduled finals. It was the lowest number of tests since 2002, when Harvard offered 200 fewer courses.

At the graduate level, out of 500 courses, only 14 had final exams.

Harvard’s new General Education Curriculum also plans to forgo the requirement for final examinations. The English and history departments, for example, have already dropped senior-year general examinations. Last fall, the English department had only five courses that offered final exams.

Not surprisingly, one professor of German art and culture observed that attendance diminished late in the semester of courses that didn’t offer exams. He also noticed a connection between dropping exams and professors being absent from the campus during the month of May. Harris is already hinting that Harvard will shorten its academic calendar due to the ease in testing demands.

“What’s really happening,” observed National Review Online, “is that Harvard is yielding to education’s most primitive temptation: lowering standards and waiving measurements for the sake of convenience.”

But there is more to this than just dumbing down academic requirements for the sake of convenience. The purpose of modern education, Prof. Allan Bloom noted in his 1987 classic, The Closing of the American Mind, is certainly not to turn students into scholars. It’s to teach them that truth is relative; that there are no absolutes—just openness and tolerance.

And in the moral relativist world of modern education, it’s only fitting that America’s foremost institution of learning abandon the last results-based method of instruction on campus: the final exam.

Soon, other colleges and universities will follow Harvard’s lead. As Herbert W. Armstrong wrote 45 years ago, “To question this world’s system of education, or its standards, would seem ridiculous. That’s because people are prone to assume—to carelessly take for granted without question whatever is popular—whatever has general public acceptance” (Plain Truth, December 1965).

New System of Education Coming

In the world of tomorrow’s educational system, to be established at Jesus Christ’s return, the evil source of man’s nature will be fully exposed for what it is and then transformed into God’s divine nature. What few people realize—even in the world of religion—is that this plan of salvation will actually be offered to mankind through a universal system of true education!

Besides being Maker and Ruler over all there is, God is also mankind’s Teacher and Master. In John 3:2, Nicodemus referred to Jesus Christ as a teacher who came from God. The Greek word for “teacher” appears dozens of times throughout the gospels—oftentimes translated as “master.” Jesus Christ was a teacher who taught His disciples, or students,lessons that came from the Father.

As our primary Educator, God “reveals knowledge beyond and outside the scope of human mind of itself to comprehend,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in The Incredible Human Potential. He reveals that knowledge to submissive students who are willing to look to Him as the final authority for what is right and wrong.

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves,” God inspired the Apostle Paul to write. “Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Corinthians 13:5). The Greek word for “examine” means to test, to scrutinize, or discipline. And “reprobate” refers to someone who fails to pass the test.

If there is anything we have learned about the twisted and perverted approach to modern education in this present evil world (Galatians 1:4), it’s that if we’re going to be educated the right way, we must first examine ourselves in relation to the authoritative Word of Almighty God.