Even the title of this article may have you jumping up and down like this:
But, unfortunately, finals will probably exist while we are still learning. In any case, it is nice to think about this future, and learning about why finals might disappear may ease your anxiety about finals seasons.
Essentially, finals are a waste of time. Since higher education’s purpose is to teach students how to communicate around ideas in a critical way, finals serve no purpose. Furthermore, the format of finals do not actually determine a person’s aptitude for most jobs. The fact is finals teach people to study material for one semester and promptly forget it all the next. Instead, it would be more useful for students to use their skills on real-world problems, and their ability to solve these problems could be what grades are based on.
Just as finals do not benefit students, they also do not really give meaning for grading purposes. Typically, a student who has been getting A’s or B’s the entire year will perform well on the final exam and visa versa. Clearly, finals only reflect how the students have been doing all year, which gives teachers information they already know.
As these facts become more widely accepted, hopefully finals will become an obsolete fixture in our educational system.