How To Take An Exam... And Remake The World

by Bertell Ollman

Who are you kidding? No one is completely satisfied with the grades they get on exams or with the life that comes along with it. This book explains why, shows how the two are related, and--with the help of stories, jokes, cartoons, games, myths, statistics, pop quizzes, personal anecdotes, generally hidden facts, practical advice, some analysis, and a dash of theory--tells you what you can do to ring the bell on exams and in life. No kidding!

Authored by a famous professor who reveals the inner secrets of his trade, How to Take an Exam... interplays two totally disparate subjects, then brings them together in a revealing indictment of `higher' education and the world it produces. A delightful tour de force that entertains while it educates.

Funny, serious, practical, impractical, a delight to read. - Howard Zinn, Boston University

A delighful tour de force that entertains while it educates...An invaluable tool both for taking exams and examining society. - Dr. Michael Parenti, noted author and lecturer

No student can afford to be without How To Take an Exam...don't miss this book, if you want to learn how to beat the system, that is the exam system as well as the political one. - Prof. James O'Connor, University of California, Santa Cruz

Humerous, scary and angry...The tips Ollman offers about examinatons are flawless, and the wisdom he presents about political economy communicates by anecdote and example rather than by programmatic analysis. - Prof. Andrew Ross, New York University

A wonderful combination of Oxford scholarship, Marxist insight, Jewish humor, and revolutionary pedagogy. Ollman at his best. - Michael Savas, University of Athens

Ollman has done it again! He's brought together radical scholarship and a hilarious sense of humor to produce this unique book. - Ira Shor, City University of New York

Bertell Ollman, winner of the 1st Charles McCoy Life Time Acheivement Award of New Political Science from the American Political Science Association (2001), has authored many books, among which is Social and Sexual Essays on Marx and Reich (Black Rose 1978). He is currently teaching at New York University in the Department of Politics.

2001: 216 pages, 70 cartoons, bibliography and index

Genres: Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Bertell Ollman is a professor of politics at New York University. He teaches both dialectical methodology and socialist theory. He is the author of several academic works relating to Marxist theory.
Ollman is also the creator of Class Struggle, a board game based around his Marxist beliefs, and from 1978-1983 was president of Class Struggle, Inc., the company that initially produced and marketed the game. The game was later released by a major board game company, Avalon Hill. It received publicity due to its unusual and controversial theme.

Reviews

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ollmann was a professor of mine in college, and this book is much like his class: frank, honest, to-the-point yet completely entertaining. Oh, and insightful and informative.

The basic premise is pretty clever: he knows things about socialism and taking tests; you want to be better at taking tests; he wants you to learn about socialism. So, in a book about the educational system and how it serves to perpetuate a capitalist system, he inserts advice on how to perform better on tests. Of course, there's more to it than that, and the book slowly becomes a compelling example of how intricately capitalist ideology is embedded in society (using education as the microcosm), which means that the tips on how to beat tests becomes a guidebook on how to escape from our current ideology.

So it works on a number of levels: an insightful primer on socialist theory; a genuinely useful test-taking guide; and a well-crafted (if brief) look at ideology, how to notice it, and how to overturn it.

[Marianna Altabbaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

من هو الشخص الذي يحب الامتحانات ويجدها منصفة للجميع؟ لم التقي بهذا الكائن بعد و لا أعتقد أني سألتقيه أو التقيها (باستثناء الشخص الذي يضع الأسئلة الامتحانات أو المسؤول عنها)

يوضح الكاتب كيف تركيبة الامتحانات و الفحوصات تقوم بتهيئة التلاميذ لدخول سوق العمل الرأسمالي، من خلال العمل الفردي دون تكريس أهمية للعمل الجماعي، تحديد فترة زمنية صارمة للامتحان والضغط على التلاميذ في التفكير والكتابة بشكل أسرع والعيش تحت هذا الضغط. الابداع والخروج عن النمط لا يتم مكافأته في أغلب الأحيان، إلا أذا كان ضمن قالب معين.
حتى أن الكاتب نظر إلى صيغة الاسئلة حيث تتجلى بالأوامر (اكتب-حلل-اشرح..)

جميع الخصائص التي تتصف بهل العملية التعليمية و بالأخص الامتحانات هي مهمة في تركيبة النظام الرأسمالي، و المشاعر التي يشعرها الطلاب .من
قلق، اكتئاب، عزلة، خوف، عدم اكتراث...الخ، ستتكرر عندما يتحولون إلى موظفين
وستبدو الحالة التي يعيشون بها طبيعية.

[Leslie Wexler · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an amusing and mostly non-academic brush with Marxism. Not to be read for theoretical content as much as a good laugh. I emulated the style of this book as it alternates between instructions and espousing a theoretical viewpoint in an light and engaging way. I decided to write on: How to Communicate Effectively in the Conversation of Death:


Hunting wolves do many inexplicable things to the human eye. For instance, they will sometimes start to chase a deer, then abruptly stop, turn and walk away when the moment of capture is imminent. In other instances, a wolf will sniff at a set of moose tracks only minutes old, and go on ignoring them, or will circle around a herd of caribou announcing its presence for many hours yet not pursuing. The deer, the moose, and the caribou all qualify as potential prey for the hunting wolf. Why does it not attack them?

You are a mammal that long ago learned to balance on your hind legs, freeing your "paws" to manipulate objects.This maniuplation became a preoccupation, to say the least. We as a species who call ourselves human beings specialize in a kind of curiosity that looks at things in as many different ways as possible. This is a highly visual kind of pondering that opens up an idea space about what we are seeing somewhere behind our eyes. In our current experience, complex technologies mediate between our body and our environment. Instead of navigating the elements on a daily basis, we grow more accustomed to adjusting the switches our constructed environments. When driving our cars, or sitting in airplanes we have grown accustomed to complex mechanical operations that require little strenuous effort from us. Perhaps you are sequestered in an office reading this, or simply have taken a break from turning the pages of a good book in bed. I risk little argument in stating that we spend much of our time cultivating rarified forms of intellgence that involves only our mind, manipulating abstract heiroglyphs, emblems, metaphors or symbols while our muscled body is mostly inert. Thinking and interacting for us, seem to have little bearing on our carnal life and is often accomplished independent of our body and bodily relation to the earth and othe nonhuman beings.

To understand the wolf hunt, you must envision an animal in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with the surroundings. A wolf is thinking with its whole body. Equipped with the patterned behaviours inherited (genetically or socially?) from its ancestors, the wolf adapts to the environmental particulars of both place and moment in a manner of engagement that is immediate, but can this engagement be considered as the wolf making choices? Can a wolf have a conversation with another animal in the choices it makes? The experience of Barry Lopez in his observations of wolves may be useful in this respect: "That moment of eye contact between wolf and prey seems to be visibly decisive...the wolf stares, the prey signals back. The moose trots toward them and the wolves leave. The pronghorn throws up his white rump as a sign to follow. A wounded cow stands up to be seen. And the prey behave strangely. Caribou rarely use their antlers against the wolf. An ailing moose, who, as far as we know, could send wolves on their way simply by standing his ground, does what is most likely to draw an attack, what he is least capable of carrying off: he runs." In each of these immediate actions the conversation of death occurs.

Can a human think with their body the way he/she thinks with his/her mind? Many times, the answer when referring to body thinking is to refer to it this body cognition as "instinct" - but instinct suggests unthinking thinking. What if instead, you accord body thinking the same level of respect as the mind thinking? Of course, humans still think with muscled limbs - maybe less elaborately then wolves and caribou, but still: our legs steadily adjust their stride to make the steepness of the slope, our ankles flex to meet exposed roots and jumbled rocks on a nature hike. What your body is doing is responding attentively to the unpredictable nuance of the immediate moment; this maneuvring is a kind of corporeal decision-making that lays beneath all of our mental and abstract reflections. We tend to associate thinking soley as within the brain or our mind. By focusing our our mental ruminations as the primary site of thought, we more often than not deprive ourselves of a rapport with other animals. Walking through the forest, we often fail to register the vocalizations of other animals, because although our bodies are in the forest, our thoughts are commonly elsewhere. Take a moment, when next in the woods, and snap your attention toward the crack of a twig in the distance. That singular crack, a single moment of sound, is potentially the prelude to a conversation and opens our awareness to our proximity of life being lived in different ways than our own. The first response to that snap (depending on how close it is to you, or how dark it is) is usually a jolt of fear. That jolt of fear signals a lack of ability to express yourself effectively in the language of the forest. In the forest, so much of the language necessary is body language - so know how you want your body to speak, as no mediated symbol or rational sentence will help you in this instance. Once you, for instance, greet the stare of the wolf, be sure that you have entered the conversation of death. How will you signal back?

When animals lock eyes, a conversations begins where both make a decision. In other words, with this particular conversation open, a ceremony begins between predator and prey where both decide if this encounter will end in death. In the first moment of the encounter, neither animal will move. Wolves and prey typically remain absolutely still while staring at each other. What is exchanged in that moment is a request, as though the wolf "asks" whether this is the moment of feasting or continued famine. In this respect, we are dealing with a different kind of death from the one humans know. When a wolf "asks" for the life of another animal the response from that animal can simply be, "My life is strong. It is not worth asking for." In this instance, both wolf and prey will walk away from the scene.

Body language is of prime importance in the conversation of death. Are you prancing skittsh like a deer from side to side? Are you darting your eyes around in a arrested crouch like a squirrel? Are you turning your back and in effect flashing your tail and bounding off to suggest the chase? Or are you stamping your feet and bellowing as a moose that stands its ground might? The wolf stares: objectification is this act is inevitable. Unless, you, the prey can resist and effectively deny the wolf's accusation then a death conversation turns into attack. The wolf's eyes in staring, shout out, "Thing!" You must not allow that interpretation to bounce back to the wolf. Instead, you must show yourself as a centre of existence, a willful presence that asserts its subjectivity and by extension of that subjectivity, your animal kinship with the predator, "I am not a thing! I am a subject like you and you must afford me the respect this relation requires." If you are unwilling, or perhaps too fearful to use your body effectively to signal this relation (namely by returning the direct stare in a stance that leans into the conversation with sounds of fierceness and potentially stamping of the feet without humour or fear) then you will be reduced to an object of nutrition and sustenance in the immediate.

In a documentary on the "Mindscape of Alan Moore" he explained the when medieval alchemists were at work in the laboratory they alternated in their study of "Solve and Coagula." Solve was basically the equivalent of analysis - taking things apart to see how they work. Coagula was the synthesis or reconstruction - or trying to put the disassembled pieces back together so that they work more efficiently. This is a useful thought when considering this immediate moment in the academy and the waves of post-modernism and deconstruction in relation to human and nonhuman consideration. Deconstructing our relations happened long ago, as this was our Enlightenment-driven and long-standing Solve. Perhaps it's time for a little more Coagula. Having previously deconstructed these relations, perhaps we should starting thinking with both mind and body about putting everything back together. Whether, in the moment the wolf and its prey act according to some mutual understanding, or whether each only unconsciously participates in a fundamental drama, is something we do not really know at present. However, when face-to-face with a wolf it is probably prudent to be prepared to engage as another animal in this more than human world and recognize our place within it.


Postscript: My manual is based off a remembered lecture at the Wolf Centre in Haliburton forest, as a remembered artefact of my less than perfect mind, you probably should not refer to exclusively it if you are actually face-to-face with, say, a rabid or snarling wolf. With that said, the most dangerous kind of wolf that a human can encounter is a wolf that is in the process of hunting.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book in which the author mixed test-taking ideas with Marxist politics. He apparently mixed these in order to entice school-aged people to read the book, hoping they'd be distracted and read some of the politics. I would rather he had just written two books! As an adult, I don't need enticement to read about politics. Test-taking hints: quite good. Politics: very good.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious and insightful, but it has some silly pedagogical advice and takes a slightly too activist mode of education. Education isn’t indoctrination, regardless of whether I agree with the indoctrination

[sabiha ㅤ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sindire sindire okudum bu kitabı ve diyebilirim ki mu-az-zam-dı! Sanırım benim için bir dönüm noktası olacak bu kitap, hatta bu yazar. Sağ olsun.

[Aman Kalia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not quite a book for an insight into Marxism.
Good for someone in early twenties as book can make a youngster romanticize the whole contemporary socio-economic situation.
Youngs better follow this book with a more academic approach to Marxism, otherwise,you will add one more to the pool of "I know Marxism, I read someone who read Marx".

[lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

He's great and I'm convinced