Statistics on the 2014 Bar Examinations
(Part 10)
by
Thads Bentulan
thadsbentulan@gmail.com
Possible
solution
The MCQ format in
the 2011 bar could be analyzed and refined. If the Americans trust the MCQ why
not the Supreme Court?
In the case of pure
essays, I have a complex but more equitable idea: One examiner who prepares the
questions, and an additional two who will help in checking, for each subject.
Each of the three (who would not know each other) will grade each notebook separately
and their respective scores will be averaged. This is complex, but given the amount of sacrifice made by the
examinee and his family, the current method simply is likely to cause injustice.
Complex but equitable.
Ultimate
fact
Let’s not lose sight
of this ultimate fact: The examinee suspended his career and life for half a
year to prepare for the bar, sacrificing families and relationships, digging
into law books the entire day and night, and spending a huge amount of money, and
writing feverishly for eight hours for four Sundays. The least the entire
Supreme Court could do is to make certain, each and every answer is graded
individually, not by one sweeping glance at the notebook and writing a score
that says 50.00 overall. Fair is fair.
Greatest
thing
The greatest thing
about the 2014 bar is that practically all the questions in all the subjects
were very reasonable and very challenging, and probably the best set of
questions devised in the last decade. The problems were deeply thought of, that
one bar lecturer commented that the problems were challenging, and that he was hardly able to
finish answering in time when he attempted doing it himself. And he is a bar
lecturer, an expert of more than 20 years. There were no outlandish or weird or
nonsensical questions such as “What is outer-space? Who or which can exercise
jurisdiction over astronauts while in outer space?”
For the 2014 bar, it
was an exam written by experts to be answered by experts.
(End of Part 10)
