Exam Test Quotes

Christmas in the Underworld was NOT my idea. If I'd known what was coming, I would've called in sick. I could've avoided an army of demons, a fight with a Titan, and a trick that almost got my friends and me cast into eternal darkness. But no, I had to take my stupid English exam.

Wisdom is nothing more than confirmed imagination: just because one did not study for his exam does not mean that he should leave it blank.

I see you like to study,” I said. “Well done.” Percy snorted. “I hate to study. I’ve been guaranteed admission with a full scholarship to New Rome University, but they’re still requiring me to pass all my high school courses and score well on the SAT. Can you believe that? Not to mention I have to pass the DSTOMP.” “The what?” Meg asked. “An exam for Roman demigods,” I told her. “The Demigod Standard Test of Mad Powers.” Percy frowned. “That’s what it stands for?” “I should know. I wrote the music and poetry analysis sections.” “I will never forgive you for that,” Percy said.

To be better equipped for the tests that the year will bring — read a textbook. To prepare for the tests that life will bring — read a book.

An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected.

School exams are memory tests, in real-world no one is going to stop you from referring a book to solve a problem.

In his mercy, He sent the storm itself to make us seek help. And then knowing that we’re likely to get the wrong answer, He gives us a multiple choice exam with only one option to choose from: the correct answer. The hardship itself is ease. By taking away all other hand-holds, all other multiple choice options, He has made the test simple. It’s never easy to stand when the storm hits. And that’s exactly the point. By sending the wind, He brings us to our knees: the perfect position to pray

En los exámenes los estúpidos preguntan cosas que los sabios no pueden responder

Exams test your memory, life tests your learning; others will test your patience.

Classical Studies Question: What were the circumstances of Julius Caesar's death? Answer: Suspicious ones

Well, tests ain't fair. Those that study have an unfair advantage. It's always been that way.

Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.

General Studies Question: Redundancy is often an unpleasant and unexpected event in someone's life. Give two examples of unexpected life events. Answer: 1) death 2) Reincarnation

Julie crossed her arms. “I’m serious. Flat Finn can’t possibly go to school with her, right?” “He already went to Brandeis so, no, he doesn’t need to repeat seventh grade. Although they did make him take a bunch of tests in order to qualify out. He barely passed the oral exams, though, because the instructors found him withholding and tight-lipped. It’s a terribly biased system, but at least he passed and won’t have to suffer through the school’s annual reenactment of the first Thanksgiving. He has a pilgrim phobia.” “Funny. Really, what’s the deal with Flat Finn?” “After an unfortunate incident involving Wile E. Coyote and an anvil, Three Dimensional Finn had to change his name.

There are no exams in playschool. If you are tired of exams and tests life is throwing at you, make your life like a book from playschool: Less words, more pictures. Less conclusions, more stories. Less meaning, more poetry. Less interpretations, more direct experiences.

Cussing like a commoner wasn't something I was tested on. I picked that habit up outside of high school.

…[A] copyeditor must read the document letter by letter, word by word, with excruciating care and attentiveness. In many ways, being a copyeditor is like sitting for an English exam that never ends: At any moment, your knowledge of spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, syntax, and diction is being tested.

Dear Future Daughter: 1) When you’re at some party, chain smoking on the roof with some strange girl with blue hair and exorbitant large dark eyes, ask her about her day. I promise you, you won’t regret it. Often times you’ll find the strangest of people have the most captivating of stories to tell. 2) Please, never mistake desire for love. Love will engulf your soul, whilst desire will emerge as acid, slowly making it’s way through your veins, gradually burning you from the inside out. 3) No one is going to fucking save you, anything you’ve read or heard otherwise is bullshit. 4) One day a boy is going to come along who’s touch feels like fire and who’s words taste like vanilla, when he leaves you, you will want to die. If you know anything at all, know that it is only temporary. 5) Your mental health comes before school baby, always. If its midnight, and you have an exam the next day but your hands have been shaking for the past hour and a half and you’re not so sure you want to be alive anymore, pull out that carton of Ben and Jerry’s and afterwards, go the fuck to bed. So what if you get a 68% on the exam the next day? You took care of yourself and at the end of the day that will always come before a high test score. To hell with anyone who tells you differently.

Q: Explain the concept of homeostasis? A: It is when you stay at home all day and don’t go out.

Math test tomorrow. Check. Complete lack of preparation for test. Check.

Since segregationists had first developed them in the early twentieth century, standardized tests—from the MCAT to the SAT and IQ exams—had failed time and again to predict success in college and professional careers or even to truly measure intelligence. But these standardized tests had succeeded in their original mission: figuring out an “objective” way to rule non-Whites (and women and poor people) intellectually inferior, and to justify discriminating against them in the admissions process. It had become so powerfully “objective” that those non-Whites, women, and poor people would accept their rejection letters and not question the admissions decisions.

Life has always been an open-book exam

Describe what is meant by “forgetting.

Final exams,huh? It seems pointless to think about real life again.” “I find test taking relaxing,” she said. “I’m not surprised. You probably study.

I hate reading poems—school made me hate them. I’d spend hours interpreting one, just to read the memorandum and realize I’d be fucked during exams. I remember making a little asterisk next to every question I struggled with, and at the end of the paper, I’d realize I was looking at the fucking Milky Way.

They say life is a test and this is a ridiculous idea! There is neither examination nor examinant! You encounter problems in life either because you are stupid or your path just crosses with the problems’ path by luck! Nobody is sending you problems to test you! Stay loose and chuck out the irrational idea of ‘test’ at once!

Fear is the absence of reasoning.

Your courage will be tested during the adversity as well as during the change.

Feet away, Professor Dema stood, carrying a large gunlike weapon with both her hands and a snarl on her lips. This was not the way final exams were supposed to go.

The professor argues against measuring effectiveness in the shallow short-term in the "fierce humanities," for teaching that seeks not merely learning, but unlearning, that seeks to unsettle knowledge and assumptions in ways more fundamental than any exam can or should test.

When you fear you will confirm a negative stereotype, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy not because the stereotype is true, but because you can't stop worrying that you could become an example proving it. This self-fulfilling prophecy, being only a matter of perception, can be easily sublimated. Another study by Steele measured the math abilities of men versus women. When the questions were easy, the women and men performed the same. When they were difficult, the women's scores plummeted lower than did those of their male peers. When they ran the tests again with new participants, but this time before handing out the problems told the subjects that men and women tended to perform equally on the exam, the scores leveled out. The women performed just as well as did the men. The power of the stereotype--women are bad at math--was nullified.

In the US where the girls are doing not as well as boys in some tests, the information seems to be interpreted as showing that girls just aren't as good at these things so we can't expect them to be mathematicians. But here in the UK people are reacting to boys not doing as well as girls in maths exams by saying, what can we do about that, we need to fix that ... This difference is telling.

By the time the average person finishes college, he or she will have taken over 2,600 tests, quizzes, and exams. The right answer approach becomes deeply ingrained in our thinking. This may be fine for some mathematical problems where there is in fact only one right answer. The difficulty is that most of life isn’t this way. Life is ambiguous; there are many right answers- all depending on what you’re looking for. But if you think there is only one right answer, then you’ll stop looking as soon as you find one.

In the past, my brain could only compute perfection or failure—nothing in between. So words like competent, acceptable, satisfactory, and good enough fell into the failure category. Even above average meant failure if I received an 88 out of 100 percent on an exam, I felt that I failed. The fact is most things in life are not absolutes and have components of both good and bad. I used to think in absolute terms a lot: all, every, or never. I would all of the food (that is, binge), and then I would restrict every meal and to never eat again. This type of thinking extended outside of the food arena as well: I had to get all of the answers right on a test; I had to be in every extracurricular activity […] The ‘if it’s not perfect, I quit’ approach to life is a treacherous way to live. […] I hadn’t established a baseline of competence: What gets the job done? What is good enough? Finding good enough takes trial and error. For those of us who are perfectionists, the error part of trial and error can stop us dead in our tracks. We would rather keep chasing perfection than risk possibly making a mistake. I was able to change my behavior only when the pain of perfectionism became greater than the pain of making an error. […] Today good enough means that I’m okay just the way I am. I play my position in the world. I catch the ball when it is thrown my way. I don’t always have to make the crowd go wild or get a standing ovation. It’s good enough to just catch the ball or even to do my best to catch it. Good enough means that I finally enjoy playing the game.

Having neurons wire together can be a good thing. A positive experience with a math teacher can lead to neural connections that link math with pleasure, accomplishment, and feeling good about yourself as a student. But the opposite is equally true. Negative experiences with a harsh instructor or a timed test and the anxiety that accompanies it can form connections in the brain that create a serious obstacle to the enjoyment not only of math and numbers, but exams and even school in general.

A word now about the bar exam: It's a necessary chore, a rite of passage for any just-hatched lawyer wishing to practice, and though the content and structure of the test itself vary somewhat from state to state, the experience of taking it - a two-day, twelve-hour exam meant to prove your knowledge of everything from contract law to arcane rules about secured transactions - is pretty much universally recognized as hellish.

Think back to when you were a student. Someone likely told you to get a good night’s sleep and to eat a healthy breakfast before a test or final exam. The theory is, you need to be fresh to perform well. However, while getting sound sleep the night before a test is a good idea, it is too late to help you on the test. The real benefit comes from getting good sleep as you learn throughout the year, so the information can be encoded in your memory each night. If you file everything away properly as you go along, this knowledge will be there for you when you need it most.

Blaming others for anything in which blacks lag has become standard operating procedure among white liberals. If blacks do not pass bar exams or medical board tests as often as whites or Asians, then that shows that something is wrong with those tests, as far as many white liberals are concerned.

The complex tactile movement of writing by hand stimulates our mind more effectively than typing. It activates multiple regions of the brain simultaneously, thereby imprinting what we learn on a deeper level. As a result, we retain information longer than we would by tapping it into an app.18 In one study, college students who were asked to take lecture notes by hand tested better on average than those who had typed out their notes. They were also able to better retain this information long after the exam.

Day and night are nothing more than illusions before our eyes.

Time is still too complicated for us to comprehend and we cannot define it using our wristwatches, nor by using the big clocks on the wall.

Those who were frequently tested reached the end of the semester on top of the material and did not need to cram for exams. How

Studying for an important test? Google "site:edu [subject] exam". You'll get a bunch of different college exams with similar problems to what may be on your test.

The person that passes a test today would never pass that same test four weeks later. Final exams are really final!

Whereas a physician used to do house calls, sit at the bedside, and touch the patient, we now offer 13-minute patient visits in a sterile white room where lab tests may take the place of a thorough patient history and radiological studies may even replace the hands-on physical exam. Without the healing power of listening, loving touch, nurturing care, and healing intention, what are we offering patients beyond straight technology?

Exams do not assess anything significant to the future of children, because no one knows how to assess or measure the key factors to the future success of any person, child or adult. They are a closed system; tests exist for their own sake. They measure the ability of the entire school community—children, parents, teachers, administrators—to focus all their efforts on producing good results on tests! Nothing more, nothing less. To

But no matter how strenuously everyone denies it, race-based hiring inevitably means lower standards. As Americans begin to wake up to the poor quality of their schools, a few states have begun to test teachers to see if they are up to snuff. Teachers’ unions resist this for obvious reasons, as do “civil rights” organizations. In the California teachers’ examination in 1983, 76 percent of the white teachers passed, but only 26 percent of the black teachers did. In a Florida exam the same year, 90 percent of whites but only 35 percent of blacks passed.772* In the case of the National Teachers’ Examination, 84 percent of whites passed it but only 33 percent of blacks.773 Are lower standards a legitimate price to pay for “role models”? Even if black children were somehow helped by this, it is difficult to see what good such role models can do for white children.

In the grand scheme of things, the stuff that comes with a forewarning isn't really that important. We know when that big exam is, the driving test, a long-awaited holiday. But birth, death and the police knocking at your door tend to be a bit less predictable.

The Answers Have Changed Albert Einstein was once giving an exam paper to his graduating class. It turned out that it was the exact same exam paper he had given them the previous year. His teaching assistant, alarmed at what he saw and thinking it to be the result of the professor’s absentmindedness, alerted Einstein. “Excuse me, sir,” said the shy assistant, not quite sure how to tell the great man about his blunder. “Yes?” said Einstein. “Um, eh, it’s about the test you just handed out.” Einstein waited patiently. “I’m not sure if you realize it, but this is the same test you gave out last year. In fact, it’s identical.” Einstein paused to think for a moment, then said, “Yes, it is the same test but the answers have changed.” Just as the answers in physics change as new discoveries are made, so too do the answers in business and in marketing.

Not great, young lady. Mr. Yates intentionally creates exams that challenge the abilities of his students. In twenty years, he’s never given a perfect score. Do you see the problem?” I couldn’t quite bite back my instinctive reply. “A teacher who designs tests most of his students can’t pass?

Einstein was filled with good humor and sagacity, both qualities lacking in Gödel, whose intense logic sometimes overwhelmed common sense. This was on glorious display when Gödel decided to become a U.S. citizen in 1947. He took his preparation for the exam very seriously, studied the Constitution carefully, and (as might be expected by the formulator of the incompleteness theory) found what he believed was a logical flaw. There was an internal inconsistency, he insisted, that could allow the entire government to degenerate into tyranny. Concerned, Einstein decided to accompany — or chaperone — Gödel on his visit to Trenton to take the citizenship test, which was to be administered by the same judge who had done so for Einstein. On the drive, he and a third friend tried to distract Gödel and dissuade him from mentioning this perceived flaw, but to no avail. When the judge asked him about the constitution, Gödel launched into his proof that the internal inconsistency made a dictatorship possible. Fortunately, the judge, who by now cherished his connection to Einstein, cut Gödel off. ‘You needn’t go into all that,’ he said, and Gödel’s citizenship was saved.

What I mean is, a professor is the only person on earth with the power to put a veritable frame around life— not the whole thing, God no— simply a fragment of it, a small wedge. He organizes the unorganizable. Nimbly partitions it into modern and postmodern, renaissance, baroque, primitivism, imperialism and so on. Splice that up with Research Papers, Vacation, Midterms. All that order— simply divine. The symmetry of a semester course. Consider the words themselves: the seminar, the tutorial, the advanced whatever workshop accessible only to seniors, to graduate fellows, to doctoral candidates, the practicum— what a marvelous word: practicum! You think me crazy. Consider a Kandinsky. Utterly muddled, put a frame around it, voilà — looks rather quaint above the fireplace. And so it is with the curriculum. That celestial, sweet set of instructions, culminating in the scary wonder of the Final Exam. And what is the Final Exam? A test of one’s deepest understanding of giant concepts.

There is an insatiable, demanding quality to the misogynist's love; no matter how much you give, or give up, it is never enough. He is never convinced that you care about him as much as he cares about you. He will constantly invent new tests of your devotion. It's very much like having a final exam every week for a course you can never pass.

But why do people need other planets?” “All living things strive for maximum expansion in space.” “This is the level of thinking of bacteria!” Dick exclaimed passionately. “People should behave like intelligent beings. This world is given to us as a testing ground. Even if you are right, if we finally fail the exam and self-destruct, then so be it. Even if there is a planet with ideal conditions for people, we have no right to capture it. Because everything will happen again. If we have destroyed one world, we will destroy the other. Or, at best, we will exchange one prison for another. Our salvation is in love, in cooperation, in reasonable self-restraint, and not in thoughtless expansion in space.

Just let me grab my thinking cap,” she told him, heading for her locker. The long floppy hat was required during midterms, designed to restrict Telepaths and preserve the integrity of the tests—not that anything could block Sophie’s enhanced abilities. But after the exams, the hats became present sacks, and everyone filled them with treats and trinkets and treasures. “I’ll need to inspect your presents before you open them,” Sandor warned as he helped Sophie lift her overstuffed hat. “That’s perfect,” Fitz said. “While he does that, you can open mine.” He pulled a small box from the pocket of his waist-length cape and handed it to Sophie. The opalescent wrapping paper had flecks of teal glitter dusted across it, and he’d tied it with a silky teal bow, making her wonder if he’d guessed her favorite color. She really hoped he couldn’t guess why. . . . “Hopefully I did better this year,” Fitz said. “Biana claimed the riddler was a total fail.” The riddle-writing pen he’d given her last time had been a disappointment, but . . . “I’m sure I’ll love it,” Sophie promised. “Besides. My gift is boring.” Sandor had declared an Atlantis shopping trip to be far too risky, so Sophie had spent the previous day baking her friends’ presents. She handed Fitz a round silver tin and he popped the lid off immediately. “Ripplefluffs?” he asked, smiling his first real smile in days. The silver-wrapped treats were what might happen if a brownie and a cupcake had a fudgey, buttery baby, with a candy surprise sunken into the center. Sophie’s adoptive mother, Edaline, had taught her the recipe

Then, in March of 2023, GPT-4 was rolled out for public testing via ChatGPT. This model achieved outstanding performance on a wide range of academic tests such as the SAT, the LSAT, AP tests, and the bar exam.[119] But its most important advance was its ability to reason organically about hypothetical situations by understanding the relationships between objects and actions—a capability known as world modeling.

This is just a form letter,” Jules pointed out. “And as for the test, maybe she went in for a checkup. Women are supposed to do that once a year, right? She’d been in Kenya, and suddenly here she was going to this health clinic with Molly, so she figured, what the heck. Maybe this place gives pregnancy tests as part of their regular annual exam.” “Yeah,” Max said. “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Okay. Let’s run with the worst-case scenario. She is pregnant. I know it’s not like her to have a one-night stand, but . . .” Jules said, but then stopped. His words were meant to help, but, Hey, good news—the woman you love may have gotten knocked up from a night of casual sex with a stranger were not going to provide a whole hell of a lot of comfort. It didn’t matter that the idea was less awful than the terrible alternative—that Paul Jimmo had continued to pressure Gina. And he hadn’t taken no for an answer. Which was obviously what Max was thinking, considering the way he was working to grind down his few remaining back teeth. “So,” Jules said. “Looks like our little talk didn’t exactly succeed at putting you in a better place.” It was clear, when Max didn’t respond, that he was concentrating on not leaping through the window and flying—using his rage as a form of propulsion, across the street and blasting a body-shaped hole in the wall of that building where Gina and Molly were being held prisoner—please, heavenly father, let them be in there. And Jules knew that if it turned out that Paul Jimmo had so much as touched Gina without her consent, Max would find his grave, dig up his body, bring him back to life, and then kill the son of a bitch all over again.

Dynamic testing has three steps. Step 1: a test of some kind—perhaps an experience or a paper exam—shows me where I come up short in knowledge or a skill. Step 2: I dedicate myself to becoming more competent, using reflection, practice, spacing, and the other techniques of effective learning. Step 3: I test myself again, paying attention to what works better now but also, and especially, to where I still need more work.

...he had also acquired a peculiar academic quirk. During exams, he knew all the answers but wasn’t able to successfully map his answers to the right questions. So as soon as an exam started, he simply started putting his answers in the order in which he remembered them. Every time he moved to a new class, his parents made the new teachers aware of this snag. The teachers acknowledged it and reassured the parents that they’d match his answers against the appropriate questions.

In the meantime, I need you to return to your session, Mr. Sencen. I realize elvin history isn’t your favorite subject, but it’s crucial that you attend, both for a better understanding of our world, and to prove you’re committed to your education.” Keefe snorted. “We all know that’s not true.” Magnate Leto ignored him. “I’ve spoken to Lady Sanja, and she’ll have an exam ready for you when you arrive, covering the lectures you’ve missed recently.” “Please, like I need to be tested.” Keefe tapped the side of his head. “I skimmed through the reading material on the first day. Photographic memories are so handy that way.” “I’m glad to hear it. But it won’t help you with the notes I expect you to take during the lecture Lady Sanja will give once you’ve completed the exam. I’ll be checking them in this afternoon’s study hall.” “Aw, come on, Leto,” Ro whined. “I can’t take another speech on how the world would be lost if you guys hadn’t started bossing everyone around. I swear, for such a scrawny species, your egos are out of control!

Imagine you are in a classroom and they hand you a test with many interesting multiple choice questions, until you get to “Can you just explain what exactly you believe how the Universe started?” & here are the options. a) The Big Bang b) It’s always been there c) God! or Gods d) A bowl of cherries e) I don’t know…. If you choose (a) then what or who & why caused it? & the test continues…..If you choose (b) that would be my choice. If you choose (c) then who or what created God or Gods? And where do they come from? And if you think they have always been there, the same thing could be said about the universe. If you choose (d) It doesn’t make sense, it is odd, an anomaly, not supposed to be etc :) if you choose (e) then you are being honest. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing. You can make “assumptions” or “pretending” that you know or a book (bible) “knows” or “tells” you but I just don’t buy that. The beauty of it is that you are here today & you can be thankful & enjoy all the life that you have ahead of you. And the test (life) continues with more wonderful questions and experiences :)

FAILURE CAN BE A GREAT TEACHER “When I was in tenth grade I decided to take an AP computer science class. I ended up failing the AP exam. But I would not accept the failure, so I took the class and the test again the following year. Somehow, staying away from programming for nearly a year and then coming back to it made me realize how much I truly enjoyed it. I passed the test easily on the second try. If I had been too afraid of failure to take the computer science class the first time, and then a second time, I would certainly not be what I am today, a passionate and happy computer scientist.

The brain, you see, is not a computer, despite oft-repeated claims to the contrary. The brain is a living thing, much more like an overgrown garden than an orderly filing cabinet. And mind-wandering through your own garden of thoughts, memories, feelings, and desires is a sure way to discover your inner creative self. Science backs this up. Mind wandering is directly linked to enhanced creativity. The more your mind wanders, the greater the connections seen between far-flung areas of the brain on MRI exams. Daydreamers are not only more creative, they’ve even been shown to be smarter on certain tests,

It was this almost otherworldly feeling, where you’re so small, but not in a way that’s degrading or upsetting, but the fact that you’re on the planet at the same time as something so big and so significant, I don’t know—it was strangely life-affirming? Like you’re not alone in the world. And I get that same feeling when I’m near Sam Penny. Other feelings too, like this buzzy electricity. And it’s there, all thick in the air, us trying to learn about the other. It feels like we’re cramming for an exam, studying like maniacs the night before a test on a subject we’ve half-listened to all year. The content isn’t unfamiliar when you read it; it’s like you’ve read it before. Sam feels like I’ve read him before, but I haven’t. He feels like the kind of memories I wish I had but don’t. He’s like déjà vu. And you know how when that happens, your brain is like, “Wait, we’ve been here before,” and you’re watching everything unfold and you’re waiting for the next thing to happen and you’re like, “I knew that,” and then the next thing happens and you’re like, “I knew that too,” and every time something happens that you’ve been waiting to happen because you feel like it’s already happened even though it hasn’t, you feel this floaty sense of delighted satisfaction—that’s what it feels like to be near Sam Penny.

In the evening we shall be examined on love.” –St. John of the Cross And it won’t be multiple choice, though some of us would prefer it that way. Neither will it be essay, which tempts us to run on when we should be sticking to the point, if not together. In the evening there shall be implications our fear will change to complications. No cheating, we’ll be told, and we’ll try to figure out the cost of being true to ourselves. In the evening when the sky has turned that certain blue, blue of exam books, blue of no more daily evasions, we shall climb the hill as the light empties and park our tired bodies on a bench above the city and try to fill in the blanks. And we won’t be tested like defendants on trial, cross-examined till one of us breaks down, guilty as charged. No, in the evening, after the day has refused to testify, we shall be examined on love like students who don’t even recall signing up for the course and now must take their orals, forced to speak for once from the heart and not off the top of their heads. And when the evening is over and it’s late, the student body asleep, even the great teachers retired for the night, we shall stay up and run back over the questions, each in our own way: what’s true, what’s false, what unknown quantity will balance the equation, what it would mean years from now to look back and know we did not fail.

Imagine you were asked in a maths paper at junior school, 'Which would you prefer, a shilling or two sixpences?' and you answered, 'Two sixpences,' because thinking of the two tiny silver coins jingling together in your pocket made you feel good and you loved those cute little sixpences. But when the test paper was returned you saw a big red cross through your answer, and that night your mother explained to you that it was a trick question, two sixpences and a shilling were worth the same amount – which you knew, but you'd still prefer two sixpences. It wasn't that you were stupid, you just saw things from a different angle. Sixpences had character, shillings didn't. And you felt richer with two sixpences because there were two coins, not just one. But despite all these explanations, you were still wrong and you kept getting tripped up by these trick questions over and over again, in exams, in relationships, friendships, jobs and interviews. In fact, these misreadings of situations happened so often that you started to view the world as a tricksy and untruthful place. Then you noticed that the people who saw the tricks behind the questions were popular and always at the top of the class. Baffled by life and its unseen rules, you began to doubt everything around you. You felt you had to approach all of life as a trick, just to get it right a few times.

The solution to the problem of poor performance scores had been a new system of grading that would encourage students to stay in school as well as improve their self-esteem. Beyond these important, admirable goals, it also had a more immediate purpose: it would undoubtedly reduce the school’s notoriously high failure rate, which had become an embarrassment to the school and to the school board. Under the plan, equal weight was given to class participation (which to some teachers meant simply showing up, because how on earth were you supposed to quantify participation?), homework, weekly tests, and a final exam at the end of every six-week period. A student could flunk every weekly test as well as the final exam and still pass a course for that period.

We are not going to do the "does God test people" topic complete justice here because it's complicated, but a fair, brief summary would be this: Yes, God sometimes tests us (Deuteronomy 13:3, I Chronicles 29:17). But by God tests us, we don't mean He puts us through trials to see if we will fail (even secretly hoping we will fail). No, when God tests us, He is looking to find out what is in our hearts. He is looking to expose strength and weakness, to show us where we are and where we need to grow. His tests are not so much like a driver's license exam - you pass or fail - but like the diagnostic test a car manufacturer does on the cars themselves before releasing them into the world. The manufacturer needs to know if the vehicles are safe and ready for the road or if they need more work before they leave the factory.

It revealed the bait and switch at the heart of standardized tests—the exact thing that made them unfair: She was teaching test-taking form for standardized exams that purportedly measured intellectual strength. My classmates and I would get higher scores—two hundred points, as promised—than poorer students, who might be equivalent in intellectual strength but did not have the resources or, in some cases, even the awareness to acquire better form through high-priced prep courses. Because of the way the human mind works—the so-called “attribution effect,” which drives us to take personal credit for any success—those of us who prepped for the test would score higher and then walk into better opportunities thinking it was all about us: that we were better and smarter than the rest and we even had inarguable, quantifiable proof. Look at our scores!

(1) Phonological awareness is recognizing the sound structures of spoken language, not just the meanings it conveys. This is a reading prerequisite. (2) Phonemic awareness is the skill of recognizing and manipulating individual speech sounds or phonemes. Students must be able to segment words and syllables into phonemes to learn to read. (3) The Alphabetic Principle is the concept that printed language consists of alphabet letters that are deliberately and systematically related to the individual sounds of spoken language. Reading depends on understanding this concept. (4) Orthographic awareness is recognition of printed language structures, such as orthographic rules, patterns in spelling; derivational morphology and inflectional morphology, i.e. structural changes indicating word types and grammatical differences; and etymology, i.e. word and meaning

Finland had required a matriculation test for 160 years; it was a way to motivate kids and teachers toward a clear, common goal, and it made a high school diploma mean something. Korea rerouted air traffic for their graduation test. Polish kids studied for their tests on nights and weekends, and they arrived for the exam wearing suits, ties, and dresses. In America, however, many people still believed in a different standard, one that explained a great deal about the country’s enduring mediocrity in education: According to this logic, students who passed the required classes and came to school the required number of days should receive their diplomas, regardless of what they had learned or what would happen to them when they tried to get a job at the Bama Companies. Those kids deserved a chance to fail later, not now. It was a perverse sort of compassion designed for a different century.

Convergent intelligence focuses on one line of thought, ignoring the more complex “divergent” form of intelligence, which involves measuring differing factors. For example, during World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces asked scientists to devise a psychological exam that would measure a pilot’s intelligence and ability to handle difficult, unexpected situations. One question was: If you are shot down deep in enemy territory and must somehow make it back to friendly lines, what do you do? The results contradicted conventional thinking. Most psychologists expected that the air force study would show that pilots with high IQs would score highly on this test as well. Actually, the reverse was true. The pilots who scored highest were the ones with higher levels of divergent thinking, who could see through many different lines of thought. Pilots who excelled at this, for example, were able to think up a variety of unorthodox and imaginative methods to escape after they were captured behind enemy lines. The difference between convergent and divergent thinking is also reflected in studies on split-brain patients, which clearly show that each hemisphere of the brain is principally hardwired for one or the other. Dr. Ulrich Kraft of Fulda, Germany, writes, “The left hemisphere is responsible for convergent thinking and the right hemisphere for divergent thinking. The left side examines details and processes them logically and analytically but lacks a sense of overriding, abstract connections. The right side is more imaginative and intuitive and tends to work holistically, integrating pieces of an informational puzzle into a whole.” In this book, I take the position that human consciousness involves the ability to create a model of the world and then simulate the model into the future, in order to attain a goal.

And your worker who ‘kisses ass’ is seen as management material not because they give their all to the company, but because they spend that effort they would otherwise give to the company on looking like they give it all to the company. They spend it on all the little social games instead, and because effort spent on the metagame is focused entirely about the appearance of virtue, it overshadows those who are actually performing the primary task, it overshadows actual virtue. And this is how human hierarchical structures end up working. This is why the people who end up in authority are generally not those focused on whatever the purpose of the community is, but those who are focused on achieving positions of authority. This is why you have career politicians, why administrators end up pulling ten times the salary of a surgeon or an academic under their administration, why performing well in an exam or a test is not actually the same as being good at the thing the exam is supposed to be testing. Because the metagame outweighs the game.

For instance, there was the case of Nancy Schmeing, who had recently earned her doctorate in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Incredibly, Schmeing failed the reading comprehension section of the new [Massachusetts] teacher test, which required one to quickly read short essays and then choose the one "best" answer among those provided by the test maker. The exam supposedly assessed one's ability to boil down the essential meanings of prose. Schmeing's failing the reading section created a small furor about the test's credibility. After graduating from MIT, Schmeing worked as a technical consultant, translating engineering, science, and business documents for clients around the world. Thus, the very nature of her work necessitated the ability to find essential meanings in written texts, to comprehend a writer's purpose, and so forth. Moreover, Schmeing was a Fulbright scholar, had graduated magnum cum laude from college ... Schmeing's failure simply defied common sense, fueling concerns over the exam's predictive validity.

Grades can also be profoundly unfair, especially for students who are unable to keep up, because the level of the exams usually increases from week to week. Let’s take the analogy of video games. When you discover a new game, you initially have no idea how to progress effectively. Above all, you don’t want to be constantly reminded of how bad you are! That’s why video game designers start with extremely easy levels, where you are almost sure to win. Very gradually, the difficulty increases and, with it, the risk of failure and frustration—but programmers know how to mitigate this by mixing the easy with the difficult, and by leaving you free to retry the same level as many times as you need. You see your score steadily increase . . . and finally, the joyous day comes when you successfully pass the final level, where you were stuck for so long. Now compare this with the report cards of “bad” students: they start the year off with a bad grade, and instead of motivating them by letting them take the same test again until they pass, the teacher gives them a new exercise every week, almost always beyond their abilities. Week after week, their “score” hovers around zero. In the video game market, such a design would be a complete disaster. All too often, schools use grades as punishments.

Sometimes when we’re being tested by discouragement, it seems God is silent. We pray and we don’t hear anything. We read the Scripture and still come away feeling like God is a million miles away. But remember, this is a test. When you’re in school, teachers never talk during tests. They stand up at the front of the room very quietly just watching all of the students taking the exam. The teachers have been preparing you in the days and weeks prior to the test. Often, they’ve put in extra hours making sure everyone has the opportunity to succeed. On test day, they want to see if you’ve learned the lessons. They know that you have the information you need. They know you’re prepared. You’re ready. Now all you’ve got to do is put into practice what you’ve learned. God works the same way as your teachers here on earth. When He is silent, don’t assume He has left you. He is right there with you during the test. The silence means only that God has prepared you, and now He is watching to see if you have learned. He would not give you the test unless He knew you were ready. God is not mad at you when He is silent. He has not forsaken you. His silence is a sign that He has great confidence in you. He knows you have what it takes. He knows you will come through the test victoriously or He would not have permitted you to be tested.

Chris accompanied me to most of the exams as we got ready to have the baby. At one critical point, the doctor offered to do a test that would screen for developmental problems. People sometimes use the result of that test to decide whether to go ahead with the birth. We looked at each other as she said that. “Do you want to know?” I asked Chris. “I mean, what difference would it make if something was wrong with the baby?” “It won’t change anything. I’m going to love the baby, one way or another.” “Me, too. That’s our baby, no matter how it comes out.” We decided not to do the test, leaving the outcome to God. But we weren’t willing to leave everything unknown, or at least Chris didn’t: he wanted to know whether it was a boy or girl. A few checkups later, the sonogram proclaimed loudly, “It’s a boy!” I can still see myself lying on my back, belly covered with jelly, and Chris beaming next to me. He’d been sure the baby would be a girl-so many other Team guys were having girls that it seemed to be some sort of military requirement. I was very excited-and a little nervous. I hadn’t had a brother growing up. (Ten male cousins don’t count in this equation. Even if I love them all.” Talking to his mother, I mentioned that I had no idea what to expect with a boy. She, after all, was an expert-she’d had two, both of whom turned into fine young men. “I don’t know what to do with a boy,” I confessed. “You just chase them,” she replied. Boy, is that true.

My best friend growing up was a boy named Barry,” Buzan recalled, sitting outside on his patio with his pink shirt unbuttoned and a pair of large, wraparound geriatric sunglasses protecting his eyes. “He was always in the 1-D classes, while I was in 1-A. One-A was for the bright kids, D for the dunces. But when we went out into nature, Barry could identify things by the way they flew over the horizon. Just from their flight patterns, he could distinguish between a red admiral, a painted thrush, and a blackbird, which are all very similar. So I knew he was a genius. And I got a top mark in an exam on nature, a perfect mark, answering questions like ‘Name two fish you can find living in an English stream.’ There are a hundred and three. But when I got back my perfect mark on the test, I suddenly realized that the kid sitting down the hall in the dunces’ class, my best friend, Barry, knew more than I knew—much more than I knew—in the subject in which I was supposedly number one. And therefore, he was number one, and I was not number one. “And suddenly, I realized the system that I was in did not know what intelligence was, didn’t know how to identify smart and not smart. They called me the best, when I knew I wasn’t, and they called him the worst, when he was the best. I mean, there could be no more antipodal environment. So I began to question: What is intelligence? Who says? Who says you’re smart? Who says you’re not smart? And what do they mean by that?” Those questions, at least according to Buzan’s tidy personal narrative, dogged him until he got to college. Buzan’s introduction

Here is a checklist for helping your students maintain and boost their motivation. Relate each item to the key motivators of agency (A), relatedness (R) and competence (C). Some items may be a mixture of more than one motivator. 1 Encourage students to get to know each other and talk to each other about their lives and what matters to them. Join in yourself. 2 Suggest they keep a learning journal in which they reflect on what they have learnt,  what activities they have liked or disliked, what is affecting their learning. 3 Allow class time for them to report on their learning to a partner or in small groups 4 Exploit the motivational tools that accompany course books, such as progress tests, ‘can do’ self-evaluative checklists and CEF-based portfolios. There is more on this in the section on coaching with a course book. 5 Wherever possible give your students a choice of what they do in class and for homework (whatever their age!), either as a group by voting for one activity which everyone will do or allowing them individually to choose different activities. 6 Help students set goals for themselves, as a group and individually. Encourage them to write these down and check their progress. 7 Offer your students the opportunity to prepare for an external exam which relates to their needs, such as the Trinity GESE exams for spoken English or the Cambridge ESOL exams. 8 Ask your students how they are feeling about their English on a regular basis. Ask them where their motivation levels are from one week to the next. Get them to ask each other. Be a role model by paying attention to your own motivation!

Sometimes when we’re being tested by discouragement, it seems God is silent. We pray and we don’t hear anything. We read the Scripture and still come away feeling like God is a million miles away. But remember, this is a test. When you’re in school, teachers never talk during tests. They stand up at the front of the room very quietly just watching all of the students taking the exam. The teachers have been preparing you in the days and weeks prior to the test. Often, they’ve put in extra hours making sure everyone has the opportunity to succeed. On test day, they want to see if you’ve learned the lessons. They know that you have the information you need. They know you’re prepared. You’re ready. Now all you’ve got to do is put into practice what you’ve learned. God works the same way as your teachers here on earth. When He is silent, don’t assume He has left you. He is right there with you during the test. The silence means only that God has prepared you, and now He is watching to see if you have learned. He would not give you the test unless He knew you were ready. God is not mad at you when He is silent. He has not forsaken you. His silence is a sign that He has great confidence in you. He knows you have what it takes. He knows you will come through the test victoriously or He would not have permitted you to be tested. The key is to remain upbeat and not be discouraged or bitter. Put into practice what you’ve learned. Stay in faith. Hang on to your happiness. Treat others kindly. Be a blessing. If you do that, you will pass the test and flourish in a new season. God will bring things out of you that you didn’t even know were in you. Understand, if you don’t allow the enemy to discourage you, one of his greatest weapons has been lost. Today is a new day. God is breathing new hope into your heart and new vision into your spirit. He is the Glory and the lifter of our heads. Look up with a fresh vision, and God will do for you what He promised David. He will lift you out of the pit. He will set your feet on a rock. He will put a new song in your heart. You won’t drag through life defeated and depressed. You will soar through life full of joy, full of faith, full of victory.

45. No Plan Survives First Contact With The Enemy No matter how well you have prepared for something in advance - whether it’s an expedition, an exam, a marriage or a race - when you find yourself in the thick of the action, however good your plan, things happen. Adventure is unpredictable, and you had better learn to be flexible and to swing with the punches, or you will get beaten - it’s as simple as that. Mike Tyson famously once said: ‘Everyone has a plan…until they get punched in the face!’ If the adventure is an exciting one, you can bet your bottom dollar you will get hit by the occasional punch in the face. So prepare for the unexpected, and remember that forewarned is forearmed. Knowing that things will and do go wrong in the heat of battle is actually half the battle. It means that when it happens you are ready for it - you can react fast, stay nimble and you can survive the barrage. We used to say in the military that when things took a turn for the worse you have to ‘improvise, adapt and overcome.’ IAO. It is a good one to remember. It gives us a road map to deal with the unexpected. Being caught out, being caught off guard often makes people freeze - it is a human reaction to shock. But freezing can cost you the edge. So learn to anticipate the unexpected, and when it happens, smile to yourself and treat it as a solid marker that you are doing something right on your road to success. If nothing ever goes wrong then you haven’t been ambitious enough! I also like to say that the real adventure begins in earnest when things go a little bit wrong. It is only then that you get to pit yourself against the worst the wild has to throw at you. When all is going to plan, with all the kit working perfectly and the weather benign, then it isn’t really a test of character. It is easy to be the hero when all is going your way. But when it all goes wrong and life feels like a battle, it is then that we can see what sort of people we have around us. It is only through the hardships that our character becomes forged. Without struggle there can be no growth - physically or emotionally. So embrace the unexpected, feed off it, train yourself to be a master of the curve ball, and you will have built yourself another solid ‘character’ rung on the ladder to success.

Scientists have found that there are two important genes, the CREB activator (which stimulates the formation of new connections between neurons) and the CREB repressor (which suppresses the formation of new memories). Dr. Jerry Yin and Timothy Tully of Cold Spring Harbor have been doing interesting experiments with fruit flies. Normally it takes ten trials for them to learn a certain task (e.g., detecting an odor, avoiding a shock). Fruit flies with an extra CREB repressor gene could not form lasting memories at all, but the real surprise came when they tested fruit flies with an extra CREB activator gene. They learned the task in just one session. “This implies these flies have a photographic memory,” says Dr. Tully. He said they are just like students “who could read a chapter of a book once, see it in their mind, and tell you that the answer is in paragraph three of page two seventy-four.” This effect is not just restricted to fruit flies. Dr. Alcino Silva, also at Cold Spring Harbor, has been experimenting with mice. He found that mice with a defect in their CREB activator gene were virtually incapable of forming long-term memories. They were amnesiac mice. But even these forgetful mice could learn a bit if they had short lessons with rest in between. Scientists theorize that we have a fixed amount of CREB activator in the brain that can limit the amount we can learn in any specific time. If we try to cram before a test, it means that we quickly exhaust the amount of CREB activators, and hence we cannot learn any more—at least until we take a break to replenish the CREB activators. “We can now give you a biological reason why cramming doesn’t work,” says Dr. Tully. The best way to prepare for a final exam is to mentally review the material periodically during the day, until the material becomes part of your long-term memory. This may also explain why emotionally charged memories are so vivid and can last for decades. The CREB repressor gene is like a filter, cleaning out useless information. But if a memory is associated with a strong emotion, it can either remove the CREB repressor gene or increase levels of the CREB activator gene. In the future, we can expect more breakthroughs in understanding the genetic basis of memory. Not just one but a sophisticated combination of genes is probably required to shape the enormous capabilities of the brain. These genes, in turn, have counterparts in the human genome, so it is a distinct possibility that we can also enhance our memory and mental skills genetically. However, don’t think that you will be able to get a brain boost anytime soon. Many hurdles still remain. First, it is not clear if these results apply to humans.

An excellent illustration of this notion comes from another intriguing experiment conducted on psychology students. In this case students were given, in advance of class, either a complete set of notes on the lecture for the day or a partial set of notes—one that consisted of “headings and titles of definitions and concepts, which required students to add information to complete the notes” (Cornelius & Owen-DeSchryver 2008, p. 8). So the students who received the full notes had the knowledge network for the day handed to them prior to class (through the course learning management system); the students who received the partial notes received only the frame of that knowledge network, and had to fill in the rest on their own. The students in both conditions performed comparably on the first two examinations for the course. On the third and final examinations, however, as the amount of course material increased and required deeper understanding, the students in the partial-notes condition outperformed their full-note peers. Especially relevant for the argument that connections improve comprehension, the students in the partial-notes condition outperformed their peers on conceptual questions on the final exam. As the authors explained, “On a [final] test that required knowledge of a large number of concepts, rote memorization was not feasible, so students who encoded the information by actively taking notes throughout the semester may have performed better because they had experienced better conceptual understanding” (p. 10). This experiment has obvious implications for classroom teaching, or even the creation of reading guides or lecture notes for an online courses. However, the important point for now is that the partial notes gave students an organized framework that enabled and encouraged them to see and make new connections on their own.

Throw away that foolish idea of carrying aristocratic blood. For, all the drops of blood are the same in humans as in animals.

Anyone who wishes to be proud must be proud only in your gender that you were born with without transgressing the gender of others.

You are all born free and carry the noble spirit within you.

Our educational system is filled with the art of memorisation, how much you can recall in the exams hall, and nothing to do with the testing of our intelligence.

During the examinations, the students are not tested for their mental and physical strengths before entering the exams hall, or class.

Without a woman, there will be no hope in the near future.

Your children are your seeds. Therefore, take great care of them by giving them nourishments from the very beginning of their journey.

The ideas of the sun rises from the East and sets on West will stop, including the idea of day and night, will cease to exist except inside our imaginations.

The daughter needs proper training and care before taking the role of a mother too.

The beggar who can write and read requires proper motivation than daily support from others.

It is only the illiterate beggar who needs full support from you both in food and better quality of educational programmes.

It is, therefore, upon you as the programmer of your life, to pay more attention if you truly wish to succeed at the end of your journey.

Excretion is the elimination of a drug from the body.

We know it in the form of quizzes, exams, drills, and flashcards. But testing can also be as simple as going through study material and self-questioning, writing the information down from memory, teaching it to someone else, or having our coach ask us questions. Essentially, anything that forces us to recall from memory is a form of practice retrieval.

dexterity and problem solving but also a rigorous psychological examination, which included a Rorschach test. Many aviators would later say that passing the exam was the toughest thing they’d ever faced in the Air Corps.

We’re reminded that what school is chiefly about — in any era — is the acceptance of authority; a good child follows the rules. And the promise is always the same: if we are submissive and jump through the hoops, we will be rewarded, not just in next Tuesday’s test or the end-of-year exams, but in life more broadly. The teachers know and they can illuminate the path for us. The problem is that what schools chiefly know about is how to do well at school, which is subtly but importantly different from doing well at life.

One of the main problems with learning processes and education in our time is that they are standard and uniform: everybody learns from the same book or video, everybody gets tested on the same exam. Is this logical and beneficial? In our opinion, it is not – everybody is different and everybody learns differently: