Examsmanship: Beating The System

Every so often the CRIMSON reprints the following exam-period article. Written by Donald Carswell '50, it appeared originally in June of 1950. It won the Dana Reed Prize for that year, and also helped a fair number of people to succeed in beating the system--which is always gratifying to Us and threatening to Them.

The Harvard examination system is designed, according to its promulgators, to test specific things, knowledge of trends and knowledge of details. Men approaching the examination problem gave three choices: 1. flunking out, 2. doing the work, or 3. working out some system of fooling the grader. The first choice of solution is too permanent, the second takes too long.

This article is designed to explain how to achieve the third answer to this perplexing problem by the use of vague generality, the artful equivocation, and the overpowering assumption.

It seems pretty obvious that in any discussion of the various attempts whereby the crafty student attempts to show the grader that he knows more than he actually does, the vague generality is the key device. A generality is a vague statement that means nothing by itself, but when placed in an essay on a specific subject, might very well mean something to a grader. The true master of the generality is the man who can write a ten-page essay which means nothing at all to him, and have it mean a great deal to anyone who reads it.

The generality writer banks on the knowledge possessed by the grader, hoping the marker will read things into his essay.

Every non-mathematical field in the University has its own set of generalities. For instance:

"Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme." (Philosophy)

"The whole thing boils down to human rights." (Government)

"The Holy Roman Empire was neither Roman, nor an empire." (History)

"Locke is a traditional figure." (Philosphy)

"Marx turned Hagel upside down." (Gen. Ed.)

"Differentiation and integration are fundamental to the dynamic maturation of the human organism." (Social Relations)

To check the operation of a vague generality under fire, take the typical example. "Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme." The question is asked. "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of his age?" The generality expert begins his essay with, 'David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If this be the spirit of the age in which he lived, then he was representative of it." This generality expert has already taken his position for the essay. Actually he has not the vaguest idea what Hume really said, or in fact what he said in it, or in fact if he ever said anything. But by never bothering to define empiricism, he may write indefinitely on the issue virtually without contradiction. Of course, some people are naturally conservative; they prefer to avoid taking a position whenever possible. They just don't believe in going out on a limb, when they don't even know the genus of the tree. For these people, the vague generality may be junked and replaced by the artful equivocation, or the art of talking around the point.

The artful equivocation is an almost impossible concept to explain, but it is easy to demonstrate. Let us take our earlier typical examination, question, "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived?" The equivocator would answer in this way: "Some people believe that David Hume was not necessarily a great philosopher because his thought was merely a reflection of conditions around him, colored by his own personality. Others, however, strongly support Hume's greatness on the ground that the force of his personality definitely affected the age in which he lived. It is not a question of the cart before the horse in either case, merely the old problem of which came first, the chicken or the egg. In any case there is much to be said on both sides."

Just exactly what our equivocator's answer has to do with the original question is hard to say. The equivocator writes an essay about the point, but never on it. Consequently, the grader often mentally assumes the right answer is known and marks the the essay as an extension of the point rather than a complete irrelevance. The artful equivocation must imply the writer knows the right answer, but is must never get definite enough to eliminate any possibilities.

There is a third method of dealing with examination questions--that is by use of the overpowering assumption, an assumption so cosmic that it is sometimes accepted. For example, we wrote that it is pretty obvious that the vague generality is the key device in a discussion of examination writing. Why is it obvious? As a matter of fact, it isn't obvious at all, but just as an arbitrary point from which to start. That is an example of an unwarranted assumption.

In the long run the expert in the use of the unwarranted assumption comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question of Hume not by baffling the grader or fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we first note the progress of that age on all its intellectual fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum."

At this point our assumption expert proceeds to discuss anything which strikes his fancy at the moment. If he can sneak the first assumption past the grader, then the rest is clear sailing. If he fails, he still gets a certain amount of credit for his irrelevant but fact-filled discussion of scientific progress in the 18th century. And it is amazing what some graders will swallow in the name of intellectual freedom.