THE PETERITE Vol. LXVI
OCTOBER, 1975 Edited by
D. G. Cummin,
No. 392 J.P., M.A.
EDITORIAL Most people don't like exams; and it follows from this that examiners are not front runners in the popularity stakes. This is of no great concern to those who are examiners, because it is not usually their full time occupation; they don't wear an examiner's uniform, or have a badge marked 'Examiner': not yet, anyway. They can therefore pass to and fro among us, doing their shopping, going to the seaside, and having friends without being looked at with distrust or alarm. Our concept of examiners is probably influenced by the scale of our ability to answer their rather tiresome questions, and perhaps by the regulations they make about the papers they propose to set. A regulation for one of this year's history papers, for example, says that it will not be necessary to have studied the whole period on which questions will be set, and goes on: 'it will be possible to satisfy the examiners if an adequate knowledge is shown of a substantial portion'. It will be possible: but not, of course, probable; the suggestion being that it is most unlikely that the examiners wi// be satisfied. So the picture emerges of a group of well-fed but voracious beings always requiring more, and poised ready to express their dissatisfaction with what little has been offered. When it comes to the dispatching of scripts to individual examiners, however, the picture becomes different. Big envelopes are sent off, not to Castle Dracula or Bleak House, or even to Dotheboys Hall; but to quiet and gentle places. Can an examiner really be voracious or cruel living in Jasmine Cottage or Tum Again Lane? And how human it is for a Reverend don to send out an amended address so that his papers will not go to the austere College where he teaches but to his vacation home in Balham. Examining Boards have naturally spawned a busy bureaucracy. It is probably necessary for someone to visit a school from time to time to see that exams are properly conducted and to see precisely where exam papers are locked up until required. But when such a visitor goes away unhappy, and ready to write a report because he has only been shown a locked door, as the key-holder was not available, he is perhaps taking bureaucratic enthusiasm rather far. On the other hand, a lady who came for the same purpose, and was able to see right into the empty drawer where the papers for her subject had been locked, was so pleased that she would not even stay for coffee, but hurried off to look into cupboards and boxes in other schools. So examiners are for the most part human. But for how long will they remain so? The computer has moved in to mark multiple choice questions, and will no doubt soon go further. After all, only recently a
