What Do Students Learn from Multiple-Choice Tests?

Please select the option which best completes the following statement.

Students learn from multiple choice tests that:

A)   All the world's knowledge can be reduced to a short list of answers.

B)   These answers are concise and clear, requiring no elaboration.

C)   These answers are true, regardless of what I think.

D)   Memorization of these true answers is learning.

E)   These answers are more important than questions.

F)    All of the above.

G)   None of the above.

H)   Some of the above

I)     Answers F and G.

J)     Answer J.

(The answer is at the bottom of the essay!)

Clearly, this test is not fair.   You've been set up to fail from the start.(Sorry about that--you won't be going to Harvard Law this year.)  Such complex and controversial questions cannot be reduced into a series of concise solutions--especially solutions as biased as those I've presented you with.

You'll have to forgive my bias:  as a community college writing instructor and former high school English teacher, my job is to teach students to think "beyond the bubble,"- to grapple with the sort of complex, real world questions that cannot be reduced into multiple-choice format.   My job is to help them to ask questions about the world, and to attempt to develop answers, answers which cannot be tied up neatly, but may be fraught with contradiction and uncertainty. In short, my job is to inspire students to grapple with topics which they need to write about, as I am doing now.

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