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The history of exams

  
 
knickers
11:46 / 06.07.03
When were exams first used? This is a question that's been exercising my mind lately.

Exams tend to go with state control of education, as a kind of quality control; the classical Greeks had no concept of exams (not even Plato, with his concept of state-organised education, AFAIK). One proved one's abilities by surviving out in the big wide world. Exams seem to have started in the Hellenistic age, when a state official was appointed to oversee education.

Exams then seem to disappear until after Charlemagne - who provided state encouragement, if not control, of education.

I'd be interested if anyone has any more information.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
12:01 / 06.07.03
Palaeoanthropolgists have discovered that the first exam was "Fight or Flight 101", organised by the really erectus homo in a cave in the Great Rift Valley.

Candidates would emerge from the testing site (known also as the cavemouth), where a sabre toothed tiger would be waiting, trying to gnash its ungainly teeth. If they ran promptly away in the correct direction, they would pass. If they stayed to fight and successfully killed the tiger, they would be awarded a Distinction, and the best big cat loin chop when the beast was butchered by the tribe. Gork, the tribe's artist, would also draw a stick man on the cave wall to represent them.

If they didn't run fast enough or stayed to fight and were eaten by the tiger, they were deemed to have failed, and their name and genetic legacy erased from history.

For girls, there was a tiger cooking exam.
 
  
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