Because this is the first week of class I've been thinking about … exams. Well, among many other things I've been thinking about exams. I've also been thinking again about an essay I want to write about Barack Obama's syllabus for his 1994 current issues in racism seminar. And as I was reading through the commentary at the Times' website on his syllabus, I saw Akhil Amar's praise of Obama's constitutional law exams.
Amar says this about the Obama constitutional law exams that were posted on the Times website:
As a constitutional law professor, I came away impressed — dazzled, really — by the analytic intelligence and sophistication of these questions and answers. A really good exam — an exam that tests and stretches the student, while simultaneously providing the professor with a handy and fair index to rank the class — is its own special art form. Composing such an exam is like crafting a sonnet or a crossword puzzle.
I agree with Amar. Exams are like crossword puzzles — they're intellectual exercises all their own, which lots of us spend a lot of time constructing. And it's an art form that isn't easy to master, or at least that's been my experience. One other thing that I hadn't realized — that as recently as 2003 Obama was teaching at the University of Chicago law school.