DOC.
49
THE NIGHTMARE 449
Doc. 49
The
Nightmare
by
Albert Einstein
[Reprint prohibited]
[1]
I
consider
the final
secondary
school
exam*
that follows
the
normal school education
not
only unnecessary
but
even
harmful.
I consider it
unnecessary
because the teachers
of
a
school
are
without doubt able
to
judge
the
maturity
of
a
young man
who attends
the school for several
years.
The teachers'
impression
of
a
student derived
during
the
school
years, together
with the usual
numerous papers
from
assignments-which
every
student has to complete-are
a
succinctly complete
and better basis
on
which
to
judge
the student than
any carefully
executed examination.
I consider the final
secondary
school
exam
harmful for two
reasons.
The fear of
exams as
well
as
the
large mass
of
topical subjects
that have
to be
assimilated
by
memorization harm the health
of
many
young men
to
a
considerable
degree.
This fact
is
too well known to need to be verified in detail. But I will nevertheless mention the
well known fact that
many men
in the most varied
professions
have been
plagued,
into their later
years, by nightmares
whose
origins
trace back to the final
secondary
school
exam.
And these
are men
who have stood
up
to their
responsibilities
in life
and
can by
no
means
be counted
among
the "neurasthenics."
The final
secondary
school
exam
is furthermore harmful because it lowers the
level
of
teaching
in
the
last
school
years.
Instead of
an exclusively
substance-oriented
occupation
with the individual
subjects,
one
too often finds
a lapse
into
a
shallow
drilling
of the students for the
exam.
Instead of
in-depth teaching
one
gets
a
more
or
less
showmanship
exercise
designed
to
give
the class
a
certain luster in front
of
the
examiners.
Therefore, away
with the final
secondary
school exam!
*Translator's
note.
Readers who
are
not familiar with the German educational
system
of
the
past
should
not
misinterpret
Einstein's article
as
"humor." He criticizes here the traditional
German Abitur
exam
that
was
used from the
Empire
to well after World War II.
Passing
the
exam qualified
the candidate for
study
at
any
German
university
without
any
further
entrance
exam,
and
in
any
department.
The
exam
lasted five
or
six consecutive
days,
with written
exams, uninterrupted,
from
8
AM
to
noon; usually
oral
exams
followed in the afternoon from
2 to
6
PM. It covered all
major
and thus
mandatory subjects
such
as
mathematics,
physics,
chemistry,
German,
and two of four
languages:
French,
English,
Latin,
Greek. The
only grades
used from
school-year exams were
those in
biology, geography, history,
and
religion.
All
exam
questions
or topics
were
selected
by
the
Ministry
of Culture. A
government
official delivered
the
exams
in sealed
envelopes daily, breaking
the seal in front of the class and teachers. The
grading, however, was
done
locally
for each school. Oral
exams were
individual with at least
two teachers
present
in order to
prevent "irregularities."