PRE AI PASSING EXAMS: KNOWLEDGE OR TECHNIQUE?

These thoughts focus on examinations subjects that veer towards the offering of opinion rather than fact (i.e. my preferred type of test).? So, for example’ such areas as International Affairs, War Studies and History are relevant to this factitious debate whereas Science, Medicine and Mathematics are definitely not.

These ramblings result from the recent discovery of a published performance summary of officers who sat the Army’s Staff Promotion Examination C1974.? As a plea of mitigation on behalf of the perpetrators of the extracts below, it must surely be accepted that in the hot-house atmosphere of being put to the sword in a career survival event, candidates do not always say what they mean to say. ????

In no particular order of de-merit here are some candidates’ offerings:

“The majority of Chinese are nomads”

On the Cuban missile crisis:? “a classic case of limited war where not even weapons were used”

“…..the USA made a fool of herself, possibly deliberately, during the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971”

“…..outwards pressures from within the state”

“….the ability of the major powers to keep their politics stable is often very difficult due to freedom of speech”

“….to use nuclear weapons is politically non-instrumental”

Japan. “….busily engaged in putting the yellow pages into Mao’s little red book”

“….now that China’s red revolution has been brought to heel she can exercise her yellow influence in SE Asia”

“….unless poor countries stop getting poorer and rich countries richer the gap between them will widen”

A sovereign state is one “which acknowledges the existence of no other state in the world”

“China must not neglect to adopt a foreign policy full of diplomacy and international influence”

“….until the last American serviceman leaves Europe the USA will continue to have a presence there”

“N Ireland is perhaps an example where stability is tempered by instability”

“….the neutral states of NATO”

“….to use nuclear weapons is politically non-instrumental”

As already implied, when under pressure, many of us do not necessarily write what we are thinking; a reality that is often exacerbated by the perceived need to seem erudite which often results in incomprehensibility.? Of course, some will observe that, back in the day (C1974), the officer corps was cursed (or blessed?) with a high(ish) proportion of non-graduates and suggest therefore that incomprehensible offerings by, a mostly graduate, C21st officer corps no longer pertain.?

Maybe there are two other possibilities. First, the stress of an examination disproportionally negates, or certainly reduces, the performance of the better educated or those we once sneeringly referred to as ‘clever’ or ‘smart arses’; this impact might also apply to non Graduates although their modest expectation of success could have produced a more cavalier or relaxed approach to examinations. Second, Graduates, armed with knowledge and academic assessment experience may have been a tad over-confident.

Although unbeknown to me, it may be that statistics exist on the relative performances of graduates and non graduates, so all I can offer is a possibly atypical example:? In our leafy Surrey suburb lane lived four Staff Promotion Examination candidates of which three were graduates while one was armed with a single Grade D (40%) History A Level.? Two of the graduates failed the Staff Examination[i].? How could that be?

An elemental component of success in opinion based subjects, albeit backed with some factual content such as dates, is to put oneself in the examiner’s position.? At examination paper marking time, the assessor is generally overloaded with papers to read against a tight schedule which leads to at least one conclusion: ?He/she is likely to be bored stiff with repeated references to the curriculum’s recommended reading list.? So, in the interest of success, the sagacious candidate, sympathetic to the assessor’s stress, should alleviate that boredom by such measures as: Reading books that are not part of the recommended reading list.

Straying from that recommended reading list has the potential to make the examiner sit up and take notice, especially if he/she has not read the book or article. ?So, for example, in discussing the Vietnam War it made sense to read The War of The Flea by Robert Taber rather than some turgid tome from a University Professor named on the recommended reading list which most other candidates read and referred to repeatedly in their essays….yawn yawn goes the examiner.

In picking an obscure book that the examiner may not have read, and lacks the time to so do, the goal is wide open for firing off the invention of facts and even bogus quotations.? In any event it is always worth a candidate referring to an obscure book even if it has not been read by him or her, thereby creating the illusion of being one who is blessed with the initiative to undertake wide ranging research.? A useful embellishment to such thinking is to accept that most, if not all, examiners have their own prejudices and to discover what they are.? Discovery of prejudices does not mean that a candidate should slavishly reflect them but rather address them in any piece of work.

As admitted, the above meanderings are focused on subject areas that are largely a matter of interpreting the opinions of others and such ‘factual’ subjects as science and mathematics demand a different approach - such as offering the correct answers!. ?Bearing in mind that this author, even with the aid of a Shrivenham Graduate, grossed a mere 8% in his sole attempt at the Gunnery Staff Examination, it would be impertinent of him to offer advice on how to handle examinations that seek factual answers. ?In any event, the above thoughts, such as they are, have now been overtaken by AI which renders this article an utter waste of time!

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[i] To be clear, although termed the Staff Promotion Examination, a Staff Pass required a higher mark.

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