Exams: 'Constructive Criticism'

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Your editorial of April 21, on "grading exams," was most welcome. Much of the potential educational value of exams is lost when the student has no opportunity to see his exam again, and to learn where his performance was deficient.

May I suggest, however, that in the last paragraph, which proposes an increase in the number of readers so that "the paper could be returned in time for the student to make any justified complaints before his grade is turned in," that you are perhaps laying faulty emphasis. If you admit that the primary purpose of the exam should, in theory at least, be increased learning, then the primary purpose of returning the exam to the student is to give him constructive criticism, and not to achieve a meeting of the minds between student and greater on what a fair mark should be. It is this latter element, I think, that makes the administration shy away from returning exams, for every instructor would be deluged with irate students who didn't want to learn their mistakes, but wanted primarily to correct the grade. Philip M. Stern '47.