This could be a really good idea about learning study skills, but it isn't both of those.

There's a Peanuts cartoon about Lucy learning the pattern of true/false tests, which leads to her failing the exam. Linus suggests she should've studied the subject instead. There's also controversy in England at the moment about studying for the exam rather than the subject itself.

This can be resolved by a GCSE in passing exams, involving skills like maximising the probability that one's choices are correct, writing with Latinate vocabulary and using the passive voice a lot and other such skills which tend to work well in this area.

This would help resolve the controversy and also boost a school's position in league tables in the subject concerned, as well as increasing grades in other subjects such as the cheating in exams and complete nonsense suggested before. It's a win-win situation: the children get good grades in this and other subjects, the school improves its reputation and the exam board gets the readies. This is also a vocational skill which could make it easier to pass exams for admission to various professions, aptitude tests and could be applied if you want to work in education. I'm working towards a complete curriculum here.
-- nineteenthly, Jan 03 2012

It's not a win-win. If you get an A in "Passing Exams" and As in all your other subjects as well, this will lead to universities discounting your other subjects. They will prefer a candidate who got a C in "Passing Exams" (and As in all their other subjects) on the principle that this candidate must have had a better grasp of the subject to have succeeded despite their poorer exam technique.
-- hippo, Jan 03 2012


Not so, universities want their student intake to do well at their finals as well you know. Anyway must dash, I have loads of boxes that need ticking...
-- pocmloc, Jan 03 2012


//loads of boxes that need ticking// You don't live in the backwoods of Montana by chance, I hope...
-- FlyingToaster, Jan 03 2012


Silly, it's *mattresses* that need ticking, not boxes.
-- mouseposture, Jan 03 2012


This is the exact opposite of what the educational system needs and would only serve to devalue exam results.
-- mitxela, Jan 04 2012


Sadly this is kind of what I learned in school.

The east end of our country has a single or half-credit system for individual courses with a grade thirteen graduation level, while the west end of the country has a five to ten-credit per course system with a grade twelve graduation.
My mother, brother and I moved back and forth from Ontario to Alberta so many times while I was growing up that nobody really knew where I stood curriculum-wise.
How could they?

I had no choice but to just listen intently for that week or so of review every school has before mid-terms and finals, and then blast through the tests as fast as I could completing the easiest answers first. This would yield about a solid fifty percent or so.
By the time the whole test had been given the once-over several of the un-remembered answers would have been covered in the later questions or the memories would have gotten jogged letting me add another say fifteen to twenty percent onto the first fifty.
Unknown multiple-choice questions were good for another twenty five percent on the tests that mattered, or more using intuition alone, of what's left over and as long as spelling didn't cost points on the essay sections I could pull-off solid seventies to eighties-ish-es... sometimes nineties even, if a given teacher appreciated imagination, on the tests that mattered most so that my standing twenty to forty-ish percent assignment averages for whichever year could be brought up to within that passing fifties to sixties-ish range.

This does not count the grade I failed on purpose so as to avoid death by high-school.

<involuntary shudder>

Based solely on personal experience I think this a bad idea sir [teenthly]... though I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that basic IQ test scores would improve across the board if it were implemented.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 04 2012


Knowing the author (which I correctly guessed from the title alone), my interpretation of this is "Studying for exams, and exam skills, result in higher marks than does understanding of the content. This may not be the best situation, but since the will or the means to change it appears to be lacking, why not honestly embrace the reality?"
-- spidermother, Jan 12 2012



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