Barzun, Jacques. “Opinion | Multiple Choice Flunks Out.” The New York Times, October 11, 1988, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/11/opinion/multiple-choice-flunks-out.html.

Archived copy at https://web.archive.org/web/20231022192353/https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/11/opinion/multiple-choice-flunks-out.html. Internet Archive.

Barzun takes standardized multiple-choice tests to task.

A version of this article appears in Barzun's book: Barzun, Jacques. Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning. University of Chicago Press, 1991. http://archive.org/details/begin-here-the-forgotten-conditions-of-teaching-and-learning.

He = Banesh Hoffman

This is tangentially similar to Malcolm Gladwell's claim that standardized testing for law school privileges certain types of thinkers over others, something which creates thinkers who are good at quick things with respect to time pressures rather than slower and more deliberate thinkers who are needed at higher level functions like the Supreme Court.

See: The Tortoise and the Hare, S4 E2 of Revisionist History https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-tortoise-and-the-hare

testing imagination versus fact memorization/simple recall compared with thinking quickly under pressure or slowly with time and increased ability to reason

interesting...maybe this goes to show that educators as a whole are focusing more on rote memorization and not true application of learning

But is there any real way to get around this?