The current conventional wisdom seems to be that spit back questions on tests are bad and archaic and that thought questions are the ideal of what a test ought to be. I would like to question this line of thought on several levels (I am only discussing from a high school teachers perspective, since thats what Im qualified to discuss; I understand that it would be a very different discussion if we are talking about elementary school or post high school teaching).
1] I certainly agree that thought questions are a wonderful method of taking the material being taught to another level, but I think that it is better used as a homework or classroom discussion than as a test question, for the following reasons:
A] Thought questions ought to be just that, questions that the students have time to think about. Giving it as homework gives the student time to think it over in a meaningful way, whereas a test is about how quickly they can think on the spot. Usually they give the thought part just a brief amount of time, since there are many other questions that need to be answered and the test time has very definite limits. I feel like teachers will often spend somewhere in the range of an hour thinking of the thought question, but then expect the student to answer it in about 5 minutes.
B] As much as we want the test to be a learning experience, at the end of the day, we need to give a grade and have a fair system for what that grade ought to be. Thought questions are often open ended and can be analyzed in several ways. I feel like we often fall into one of 2 traps 1] the can you guess how the teacher thinks way of grading instead of having an objective standard (if you ask your thought question to another teacher doing the same material, I dare say that you will often get a different take than the one that you had and expect your students to come up with) or 2] giving credit for pretty much anything somewhat intelligent that they write, which, I think, undermines the value of the question as part of a test. I know that people will say that they use rubrics and I think that rubrics that are given to a student before they do an assignment are fair guidelines. However, I dont think its so fair to have a thought question where the students need to guess what your rubrics are.
C]I think it is a truism for high school homework that anything that can copied, will be copied and that thought questions for homework are more meaningful and less likely to be just passed around during breakfast.
Now, one could reasonably argue that giving an oral bechina instead of a written one would deal with many of these points, but I dont think that the average high school set up allows for doing that in a meaningful way.
2] I am sympathetic to the fear that when there are spit back questions on tests, the kids are just memorizing their notes and not really understanding them at all. However, I feel like the spit back is all bad way of thinking is overly simplistic. At the end of the day, our students should walk away with a baseline of knowledge of what theyve learned. If we did a machloket ibn ezra/ramban in chumash or rashi/tosfot in gemara, they should be able to spit it back. First of all, any subsequent meaningful discussion requires, as a prerequisite, thorough prior knowledge of the material. Second of all, I dont think our goal is just to enable future discussion. Our students knowing the material is a value in its own right and just knowing what rashi versus tosfot said is important in and of itself. I believe that raising the level of Jewish literacy of our students ought to be one of our major goals as teachers. I also think, and realize that now Im on shakier ground, that thought questions often involve taking out the basic overall concept in a topic and dont necessarily show a thorough knowledge of the overall subject. So for example, I dont think that the take away from learning the basic rules of Shabbat ought to just be the ideas of davar sheino mitkavan, pesik reisha etc, I think that the kids ought to know the gemarot about each one and which cases the rishonim debated (assuming that thats what you learned in class). Giving just application questions to those concepts (which is, I think, a good thought question and much less open ended than the average) is, I think, not enough.
I am sure that many of the readers will disagree what parts (if not all) of what I am saying and certainly respect the other points of view. I have seen thought questions on tests that were brilliant, but have all too often seen ones that are, I think, open to my aforementioned critiques.
Yaakov Blau
