Multiple Confusion

In the old schoolboy game of guessing which fist has a marble in it, the story goes, one lad almost always won. He knew that a boy with a little cunning would shift the marble after its position had been guessed, while a smarter boy would expect this move to be anticipated, and keep the marble in the same hand. A still cleverer player would know that even this subtlety would be seen through, so he would shift his marble. It is the contention of one aroused educator that the best U.S. students are forced to play just such a guessing game--for very high stakes--when they take such tests as the College Boards and the National Merit Scholarship examinations.

The multiple-choice question is the villain, according to Banesh Hoffmann, Queens College mathematics professor now on leave at King's College, University of London. In the American Scholar, he cites a paraphrased example: "Emperor is the name of (A) a string quartet, (B) a piano concerto, (C) a violin sonata." The average student knows of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto, so he picks answer B with no trouble. But the superior student knows also of Haydn's "Emperor" Quartet. Only one answer is permissible, so the student must decide whether the test maker was ignorant of the lesser-known Haydn work, or whether he merely assumed that no student would have heard of it.

Shallow or Shrewd? Probably, after wasting time with this sort of mind reading, the superior student will play safe and pick Beethoven. But what should he do, asks Test-Tester Hoffmann, with an even more dubious question? From a booklet of samples issued by the College Entrance Examination Board, Hoffmann picks a question rated "easy":

"The American colonies were separate

and entities, each having

its own government and being entirely ." The choices offered:

(A) incomplete--revolutionary

(B) independent--interrelated

(C) unified--competitive

(D) growing--organized

(E) distinct--independent

The answer the test makers want is E. But Hoffmann points out that distinct merely completes a cliche, and adds little meaning to the sentence. Independent is a foggy word (is it political, or economic, or religious, or geographical independence that is meant?), and entirely is such a strong qualifier that independent really does not fit the sentence in any of its meanings. The good student decides correctly that none of the choices is good, and then is forced to guess how shallow or how shrewd the test maker's thinking was. Should the student, seeing that E is fuzzy, pick the lame but less inaccurate D ?

For Superficial Scholars. Any student who has gone through the high-school and college round of intelligence, aptitude and achievement tests has seen exam sections just as ambiguous. In an unpublished sequel to his American Scholar article, Hoffmann analyzes eleven more College Board sample questions--5% of the total in two booklets--and is able to show that they are, at least, highly arguable. Probably no brilliant student will be denied college entrance because he analyzes such questions too keenly, because passing scores are relatively low. But screening in the early stages of the National Merit Scholarship competitions is highly selective, Hoffmann argues, and it is quite possible that sloppily written questions could hamper genuinely brilliant students without disturbing superficial scholars.

Hoffmann would like to see multiple-choice tests rigorously rewritten or, better still, thrown out of the schools altogether. "Even if the tests were free from all ambiguities and errors," they would still have "serious defects when applied to those people who, despite impressive gifts, do not shine at parlor games."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.