In school, few words carry as much weight as “pop quiz”. Say those words in front of a class and it will immediately erupt into a symphony of disgusted groans, deep sighs, and quiet sobs. Normal tests are bad enough, but adding the element of surprise? Now that’s psychological torture in everything but name. Students have to walk to class, fingers crossed, hoping there isn’t a dreadful surprise waiting for them. Meanwhile, teachers pass it off as a necessary evil. After all, it’s better to suffer now in class rather than later on the AP or finals, right? But this doesn’t have to be the case. Pop quizzes shouldn’t be something students have to worry about.
Consider how pop quizzes affect a student’s time at home. For planned quizzes, the scheduled day and material covered on the test will be announced. However, pop quizzes are intentionally designed so that this is not the case. No one knows when it will happen or what it will cover, creating a constant pressure to review the material every day rather than just the days prior. And on the surface, this may seem helpful for students, as many struggle with procrastination. However, having to always be prepared comes with many negative consequences that outweigh potential benefits.
Firstly, pop quizzes result in inefficient use of time. Reviewing every subject, every day, requires switching focus between different topics, resulting in less attention on each one specifically. Many students find that thinking about completely different things at the same time is not a productive way to study. Contrast this with sessions focused on one topic; since the brain doesn’t need to think about other things, it can focus more on the content at hand. This is crucial for topics that require a deeper level of understanding than just memorization. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that there was no pop quiz at all, meaning all that time spent may not have been necessary. While not exactly being wasted, it could’ve been delegated to other, more immediate tasks.
Secondly, people with busy schedules would be academically disadvantaged. For an announced quiz, students can pick specific days to review class material, and if their schedule is full on certain days, then they have enough leeway to work around those time conflicts. Flexibility allows students to effectively prepare for exams. In addition, being able to keep track of all upcoming tests and plan for them is a valuable way to build time management, which is essential in college and beyond. However, pop quizzes do not provide any of these benefits. Many high schoolers have schedules packed with schoolwork, sports, clubs, and events, leading to situations where studying every day is not viable, unless they stay up later than what is healthy. And whereas students could just do it some other time and still be prepared for a regular quiz, a pop quiz can catch them completely off guard.
Apart from time management, other reasons include unfairness when it comes to different classes. In BIFU, many courses are split between different periods, resulting in later classes finding out about the pop quiz from an earlier class and gaining extra time to cram information. Not only does this enable bad study techniques, it also gives an unfair advantage to students in later classes.
Pop quizzes are a harmful tradition that creates unnecessary stress where it isn’t needed. Schools should get rid of them entirely to make life less worrisome for students.