They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedoms. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress. 考试促使降低教学标准，因为它剥夺了老师的一切自由。对老师本人教学水平的评判通常就是看学生的考试成绩。老师们不去教授他们的课，而是简化教学，对学生进行他们嗤之以鼻的考试技巧培训。最成功的投考者不总是知识水平最高者；他们是高压之下掌握考试技巧最老练者。

       The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. They get tired and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge’s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner’s. 众多因素所依赖的考试成绩只不过是某个匿名主考者的主观评价。主考官们都是人。他们会变累，会饥饿，还会出错。然而，他们不得不在有限的时间内为大队的匆匆草书的试卷判分。跟投考者一样，他们也在相同的压力之下工作，不过他们的话很有分量。在鉴定人鉴定之后，而不是主考官判卷后，你才有权提出查卷的申请。

There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person”s true abilities. Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: “I were a teenage drop-out and now I are a teenage millionaire.”评判一个人真实能力肯定有很多更简单和跟有效的方法。提出考试仅仅是经营考试机构获利的生意是否有点愤世嫉俗？这是最终分析得出的结论。对考试制度最好的评论是乱涂在墙上的这则没受过教育的一句话：“我曾是一个十几岁的辍学者，而现在我是一个十几岁的百万富翁。”