I remember getting 98.6% on an open-book test in Biology back in high school, and one of my classmates asking "How is that possible?" My response: "We had the answers right in front of us! How did I even get one wrong??"
LOL! That's just exactly what I would have said! In fact, that's what I generally said about missing anything on anything..."what do you mean I got a 98? What did I miss?"
I don't like the idea of open book tests for anything short of high school, and preferably not till college. Grade school is the time when you're SUPPOSED to be memorizing things that form the basis of learning things that come later. There is such a backlash against "rote learning" these days that they manage to get kids through school without learning anything. Sure, it's a good goal of education to learn how to learn and how to look things up and where to find information--but part of the goal of education also needs to be to actually learn things as well.
When you reach the point in your education where you are there because you want to be there and you are paying to be taught something, then there's no reason you shouldn't have open book tests--after all, if you choose not to know the stuff cold, that's your own problem. And if you don't know the basics by then, it won't do any good to have the book open anyway.
