“Identify the following passages’ author, text, and context such as the speaker and relevant themes.”
Few of Columbia’s assessment structures are as ingrained into the undergraduate experience as passage identifications (or passage IDs). All Literature Humanities students wrestle with the above line in exams, which ask them to name the contexts of 10 to 15 quotes. Passage IDs, however, are also as controversial as they are fixed. More than a few times, I’ve heard my classmates complaining as they prepare for the exam, terrified of forgetting details—which Symposium speaker said what, how to spell the name of Aeneas’ nurse—and professors reassuring them they’d be able to “gauge” the context well enough.
Seemingly reflecting these complaints, in her article “The Memorization Trap,” Sundial senior editor Uma Rajan CC ’28 argued that passage IDs are “the most egregious example” of an exam structure that rewards mindless memorization. As students locate quotes in the correct readings, she argues, they are led to focus on basic textual details—the author, the title, the plot—rather than engage in critical reflection on a work, and in doing so, they forgo an important mission of the Core.
If true, Rajan’s points would have significant stakes for how Lit Hum should be managed. For the sake of fostering students’ critical thinking, instructors might have to do away with passage IDs and begin searching for new assessment structures. Future finals would look quite different from the current tests, and Lit Hum students would no longer be talking—or worrying—about doing well on passage IDs. But would that really reflect a better version of the Core?
Rajan does well to remind Columbians that the Core Curriculum’s focus is critical thinking, not fact-learning: This is rather easy to forget when you’re perusing pages under a systematic grading structure. She also, however, too easily dismisses the role memorization plays in the process of developing critical inquiry.
Having an understanding of factual information like a text’s author, title, and plot isn’t just useful for knowing the work well enough to start thinking deeply about it. A memorized cache of knowledge is also essential to recognize a writer’s implicit ideas and draw connections: People who remember what Odysseus says about his slave-girls at one point will recognize how it contradicts his earlier comment, thereby raising questions about the hero’s homecoming and moral standing. Technically, in this age of AI, anyone can look up such information within a minute. Still, only by spontaneously identifying implications can readers avoid missing points that wouldn’t have occurred to them otherwise, building a sturdier foundation for new ideas in a more robust way.
As assessments of memorization, then, passage IDs have the potential to meaningfully contribute to the development of critical thinking. Rather than condemning passage IDs as unequivocally adverse, instructors should recognize this nuance, restructuring the test’s format to trigger critical thinking as well as factual memorization.
I believe my Lit Hum professor’s instructions represent a good example of how instructors may achieve this. My professor required that, first, her students identify not just the quotes’ context, but also broader themes illustrated by them, and, second, that these themes be particular to our class discussions: We were to explain ideas that we ourselves had raised and debated. With this specification, I could appreciate the IDs as vital rather than obstructive to developing active inquiry, as it was clear they were grounded in classroom discussions—a key part of the critical-thinking process.
In classes structured around discussion, students communicate and engage with each other. As they build on, push against, and ask questions about each other’s points, they become conscious of the matters at hand—Vergil’s view on war, Dante’s on poetry—and form opinions. In the age of AI, where misinformation and algorithm-driven echo chambers thrive, this ability to develop ideas is key to critical inquiry and appreciation for diverse ideas.
In this regard, it’s important to recognize that understanding content involves thinking about it in diverse ways through conversation with aligned and separate voices. Passage IDs could convey this value better than essays if they ask students to identify themes that arose during discussion together. This is not simply a matter of motivating concentration in class for the sake of doing well on the test, but a matter of recognizing the importance of our ideas, which, composed through discussion, structure both passage ID answers and the quotes students are asked to explain.
Beyond such symbolic connotations, as they study for passage IDs, students can learn to recognize the evolution of their own ideas through discussion. Preparing for my Lit Hum exams, I would review my class notes and marvel at the subtlety of the thoughts recorded in them. AI could not have suggested “nature as a backdrop for King Lear’s self-reevaluation” or “the house as a window to character in Pride and Prejudice.” Learning to recognize such themes rather than relying on the SparkNotes-reminiscent ones like “love and loyalty in the Iliad” is crucial for developing an appreciation of active thinking.
Some might ask: What if Rajan’s original concerns about mindless memorization still hold for other aspects of the Core, like theme identifications? What if students end up simply memorizing themes they discussed in class, just as they might factual information? Student responses for passage IDs would not, after all, go beyond the particular themes emblematized by specific, one- or two-line quotes.
That danger is hard to deny. But I think the exam format currently common to all Lit Hum sections—the passage ID portion alongside two essay-writing tasks—effectively alleviates that concern. Though Passage IDs in of themselves may have limitations, their shortcomings are addressable through more open-ended essays that are already a firm part of the Core.
On a typical Lit Hum test, after completing the passage IDs, students write a longer-passage analysis and a thematic essay. For the former task, they compose a short essay analyzing a paragraph’s importance within the entire text; for the latter, a five-paragraph essay arguing how a certain theme manifests across three different texts.
At first glance, these exam portions may appear to be an expanded version of passage IDs that require thematic identification. The essay format, however, requires a more expansive engagement with a text and its core themes: Students must analyze entire blocks of text—rather than a single quote—with language fruitful for close reading. If the passage IDs orient students’ focus and appreciation of discussions that foster critical thinking, the essay-style questions let them carry those ideas further, exploring more ideas. As students consider themes beyond those developed in the classroom—perhaps even pushing against those ideas through other parts of the text—they can recognize that a work’s ideas are limitless, beyond the scope of memorization.
In her article, Rajan described her open-ended Lit Hum essays, which let students “explore any topic in whichever reading,” as more conducive to critical thinking than passage IDs. Like longer-passage analyses and thematic essays, such “freer” assignments will undoubtedly allow students to expand classroom-developed ideas. But passage IDs’ focus on context and theme identification catalyzes rather than clashes with this process, offering building blocks for the pursuit of freer exploration.
If the goal really is to teach students to think, Columbia’s Core must highlight that there are multiple ways to do so—including familiarity with factual details and the discussion of a work.
Ms. Yang is a sophomore at Columbia College majoring in English and Comparative Literature. She is a staff writer for Sundial.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.
