很经典的文章，希望您仔细参考。
The following article LiuxuePaper gives to you seems to be related to the topic “The pressure to achieve high grades in school seriously limits the quality of learning . An educated envrionment without grades would promote more genuine intellectual development.” and some other topic.
Examinations exert a pernicious (有害的) influence on education
We might marvel at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remains as primitive (原始的) as ever they (= the methods…) were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years, educationists have still failed to devise anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. For (=despite) all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite. (= the opposite of testing what you know.) They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack (clever way of doing something 窍门)of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person’s true ability and aptitude. (才能)
As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none (首屈一指；无与伦比) That is because so much depends on them. They are the mark of success or failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother died. Little things like that don’t count (=matter): the exam goes on. No one can give of (提供；献出；发挥) his best when he is in mortal terror (极度的恐惧), or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do (= to give of his best) The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. . Can we wonder at the increasing number of ‘drop-outs’: young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on (=started) a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate (自杀率) among students?
A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down (规定) by a syllabus (课程大纲), so the student is encouraged to memorize. Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce (导致) cramming (to study rapidly under pressure for an examination 临时抱佛脚) They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedom. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to (降低到) training their students in exam techniques which they despise (看不起). The most successful candidates (投考者) are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress (forcible restraint 强迫；胁迫) [page]分页标题[/page]From LiuxuePaper.com.
The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective (主观的) assessment by some anonymous (匿名的) examiner. Examiners are only human. They get tired and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark stacks of (大量) hastily scrawled (草草写就的) scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. (他们的话举足轻重) After a judge’s decision you have the right of appeal (上诉), but not after an examiner’s. There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person’s true abilities. Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to (=comes down to; is briefly or basically) in the last analysis (归根 到底). (事情归根到底就是如此) The best comment on the system is this illiterate (LiuxuePaper Note:语文多差错的) message recently scrawled on a wall: ‘I were a teenage drop-out and now I are a teenage millionaire.
