Finals should be removed
Every student at ETHS knows the stress of finals. After an entire semester of work and studying, finals are students’ last barrier to a restful break. However, given the anxiety they provoke and the setup of the week, ETHS should get rid of them.
First, the finals schedule causes a large part of the stress students face. In just four days, students take up to eight final exams, one for each class. While studying for a couple of classes in a week would be normal, the pressure of having to review material from every single class is too much for many students. This stress can even cause health problems for students, including disrupted sleep and a weakened immune system, according to Open Arms Wellness.
Moreover, given this busy schedule, students aren’t able to study as well as they usually would. This means that their grades might drop, not because they don’t know the topics, but instead because they simply didn’t have the time to study. Therefore, finals aren’t necessarily an accurate measure of what students have learned during the year. Also, if someone is having a hard week, every one of their grades might drop, even if they did well during the year.
Additionally, because the exams are packed into one week, some students are forced to cram the night before rather than develop a good understanding of the material. If this is the case, finals aren’t achieving their goal of having students recall and understand previous material.
Many supporters of finals argue that they help students prepare for the final exams that they would take in college. However, the lack of study time ETHS provides can make ETHS finals harder structurally than college exams students could take. In fact, many colleges and universities give students a couple of days with no classes so students have time to prepare for exams. Because ETHS doesn’t offer this, students have to take more time out of school to prepare. Given that many students also have sports, clubs, and work, they might not have time for this.
“It takes a lot of outside school time to study to feel fully prepared,” freshman Eve Holcomb explains. “Sometimes in certain classes people still don’t feel ready, no matter how much they study, which is probably really stressful,” she continues.
While giving students a couple of days off to study for the exam, it would also take away from learning. The ETHS school year is about 175 student attendance days. If two weeks are spent on finals, this takes up about five percent of the school year. Instead of spending this time stressed, students could use it to learn more material. Another reason that finals should be removed is that many students already have cumulative exams, such as the AP test. If students have already studied for and taken a test review of the subject, having to do a final is repetitive and can waste learning time.
“It’s frustrating to study and stress and put a lot of effort into AP testing, and then start the process over for finals,” writes sophomore Sara Hunt.
Not only is the current schedule of final exams unnecessary, but questions also arise about the structure of the individual exams. Given AI’s increasing presence in education, future careers, and society, the skills final exam tests are less valuable than they were years ago.
If long tests based on memorization won’t be as useful in students’ future, final exams might not be as effective.
Instead, exams should shift from memorizing facts to live presentations to allow students to understand the issues. This would help students develop skills such as communication and leadership. These presentations might also fit better given other testing concerns, such as cheating. According to the International Center for Academic Integrity, 64 percent of high school students admitted to cheating on a test. By making tests live presentations, students have to actually learn and understand the material.
Finals at ETHS are ineffective and time-consuming, and they cause students unnecessary stress. ETHS would be better off without them.
Finals should not be removed
With the end of the semester soon to come, finals are soon to follow. However, many individuals, of high school, college, and fully adult age, do not like the idea of big final exams, for one reason or another. And I get it, they can be stressful, nerve-inducing, and frustrating, especially if it is a topic you do not know well, and/or you get a poor grade on it. However, final exams are still an important, and dare I say an essential, part of the academic year.
To start, it’s important to look at grading. Final exams, at the moment, make up ten percent of a student’s semester grade. So, for example, if a student aced every formative and summative and had a 100% grade before finals, but got every single question wrong on the final exam, they would end the semester with a 90% grade. Now, some may point this out as a mark against final exams; I point it out as a mark for final exams. Why? Because it means that students have to actually know the material. Let’s say that you have gotten good grades on every individual assignment you have received in a class all semester. While this does show your ability in each of these individual assignments at the time that you took them, it does not mean you have necessarily maintained mastery of these topics all the way to the end of the semester, especially if it was taken early on. This is in contrast to one criticism of the existence of final exams, which was articulated by freshman Graham Olt Nieuwsma, who stated that “It doesn’t mean anything. If a student knows the material, they’ll still get a good grade in the class, whether or not they take the test, given that knowing the material means they have an A or a B pre-final. If they don’t know the material, they’ll have a bad grade.” Additionally, re-examining the material at a later time means you can prove to your teachers that the material was indeed learned and retained. This was best put by Mr. Riley Fortune, an educator here at ETHS, who stated that “It is beneficial for you as a student to be able to prove to the teachers that you know the material.”
Now, let’s talk about stress. Final exams can generate a lot of stress for a lot of people, with some critics presenting final exams as incentivizing stress-induced cramming sessions more than academic growth. However, I say that while this may be true, it is far better this way. See, if we got rid of final exams, we would have to raise the importance of individual assignments, grade-wise, to correspond to the final exams removal, which means that every assignment becomes a lot more important. As said before, final exams contribute to 10% of a student’s grade. If final exams are removed, every single assignment would all of a sudden have to increase in value. Therefore, wouldn’t this create more stress? After all, it’s not like students are ignorant of how the grading system works here at ETHS, and if every single assignment is all of a sudden all the more important, it stands to reason that students will simply stress all the more about each assignment that they happen to have. So, while yes, there would be less stress about a great exam at the end of the year, there would be increased stress for the rest of the year, which I would say is quite a bit worse. It is better to have a period that is quite stressful but mercifully short than one that stretches out over several months.
Adjacent to the criticism of causing stress is the idea that Final Exams promote cramming sessions over measured and balanced studying and learning. However, this is not necessarily true. Due to the fact that everyone knows when exams are coming, usually a couple of weeks in advance, students have ample time to review, relearn, practice, and study the material their exams will be covering. Now, while it is true that things such as practices, sporting events, or pre-arranged plans can always get in the way, there are still school provide blocks of time that allow one to sit down and study, whether that be their free blocks, AM support, or study hall for those who attend one at some point during their school day. And, if all I have given you so far has not convinced you, then let me plainly state the lack of sense in abolishing a long-practiced academic tradition because of the personal study habits of students who may be partaking in said academic tradition.
Now, let’s discuss the distinct benefits that final exams provide to the students who take them. See, final exams, due to their nature of being a great event that requires study and preparation, final exams give ETHS students the opportunity to learn several important skills, these being time management, mental endurance, stress management, and co-operation with other students. Time management, because students must properly manage their time if they want to be adequately prepared for their final exams. Mental endurance, as the students must keep their minds strong and focused both before and during the exams to achieve a desirable result. Stress management as students must protect themselves from panicking and from anxiety to keep their minds and bodies sharp. And co-operation with other students, as getting good marks on the exams can be best achieved if students work in conjunction with each other to study and learn.
Finally, let’s talk about college. Colleges use final exams. Indeed, a large part of college is exams. Now, it is true that not all of our students here at ETHS will go on to a four-year traditional university post-graduation, but a big part of high school is preparing students for such a life path. Therefore, for this reason, we must keep our final exams.
“Because universities use them in college,” said Biology teacher Cristina Hladish. And as for you, the reader, which is worse? To have a couple of weeks of major exams per academic year, with plenty of time to study and prepare? Or to go into a university, bright-eyed and ambitious, and be woefully unprepared for the path you have chosen? I know which one I find to be the worst option.
Therefore, if you believe the facts and analysis that I have presented in this writing here today, you will agree with me that we should not, in fact, get rid of our final exams. However, on that topic, I do wish you luck with said final exams, and encourage every reader to study hard and pursue a good measure of academic achievement and success.
