By Reed Richards
As we approach the holiday season, we all have things to think about. Presents, hanging out with family and friends, food and FINALS! Finals are the ultimate barrier before the end of the year. They dictate a lot of your grade and if you’re going to do well when the semester ends. These important tests are the bane of every highschool student’s existence, and the question probably has crossed your mind before: are they really necessary?
I mean, they are supposed to test your knowledge, but what have you been doing all year? If this one test or project is supposed to make sure you understand everything, then what was the rest of the year for? When are finals necessary? When do they count? Do they at all? We will examine this posthaste!
Finals are the final test that shows you learned everything you need to know to pass the class! Now, if you do bad on this final, does this mean that you didn’t correctly absorb all the information throughout the year? Not necessarily. Finals are not a great gauge on your total knowledge. I think that tests that, well, test you on your knowledge of the current subject are important to solidifying your knowledge of the subject. However, asking a student with (most likely) 5 other classes to dredge up ancient information that they don’t use anymore for a big test is silly!
In some cases. finals should be enforced, but all around they should be let go of—they’re a fragment of the past that we should either do away with or change into something greater. The times that I personally think finals should be enforced is in the situation where the information throughout the entire class is imperative to the function of the job or degree you’re going to do. If I was to simplify that, I would say that in college classes or trade schools, written or practical finals should be commonplace, while in high school they should be shorter, less weighted or modified.
High school education is an important part of getting into college but it’s not specifically specializing you for a job—it’s just general education. As an example, if you’re going into the medical field, you should know what all the parts of the body are and the common diseases and cures. For law degrees, you should know laws! A final is a good way to scoop up all the information and implant it into your brain.
Now, there is the philosophical part of it where different teachers that set the final policy could see education differently—most commonly as either the destination of mastering the skill or a journey in which the student learns life skills like coming in on time and doing consistent work. Also, that big teacher buzzword of ‘critical thinking’ might be involved.
Now, to answer the question of if finals are necessary. Well, it’s complicated. Finals are good most of the time, but it’s a big weight on students shoulders when there is a test worth a large percentage of their grade looming above them for a week and there’s nothing you can do but study.
Now, the solution to this is to make finals worth less—like a normal test but just a bit longer. Instead of being worth 10% of your entire grade, they should be worth maybe 35% more than a normal test—still important but not as devastating if you do poorly. Another idea is to make the finals more interactive and hands-on instead of just book work. Teachers can find unique ways to make their class into a real life experience for a grade! All these ideas are ways that finals could be shifted and morphed into something less stressful and overall better for the students that take them.
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