To a certain extent, I agree with you. But to play the devil's advocate, I must say that having a open-whatever test is inherently dangerous in creating inequality in terms of information usage.
For example, if you were to have a open internet test in 2003, people who knew about wikipedia would have a significant advantage vs people who didn't. Or if the student is poor, he or she might not have access to fancy electronics or even laptops, which would make the open internet test difficult. Even if it was a open-book test, if the student were substantially poor to a point where he/she was sharing a book with a friend? And there is also an element of luck with it comes to open-notes tests. If the teacher only allow a single page of notes, what are the chances that the question might be on a subject that you omitted to put on your notes?
I've only listed tech-savvy, income, and luck as a potential way to make the test unfair, but I'm sure there are plenty more if you include any other element that is not the study material itself other than memory. I agree that in real life we don't have to memorize everything (matter of fact I'm all for critical thinking than memorization in schools), but there are certainly some benefit to the traditional test taking methods.
For example, if you were to have a open internet test in 2003, people who knew about wikipedia would have a significant advantage vs people who didn't. Or if the student is poor, he or she might not have access to fancy electronics or even laptops, which would make the open internet test difficult. Even if it was a open-book test, if the student were substantially poor to a point where he/she was sharing a book with a friend? And there is also an element of luck with it comes to open-notes tests. If the teacher only allow a single page of notes, what are the chances that the question might be on a subject that you omitted to put on your notes?
I've only listed tech-savvy, income, and luck as a potential way to make the test unfair, but I'm sure there are plenty more if you include any other element that is not the study material itself other than memory. I agree that in real life we don't have to memorize everything (matter of fact I'm all for critical thinking than memorization in schools), but there are certainly some benefit to the traditional test taking methods.