Some educators are enhancing test days by passing out peppermints with the hopes that a whiff or taste of the minty snack will help students maintain their focus and concentration. The idea is not new and does have some scientific backing. Charlotte Boucher, the principal of Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring, ordered peppermints for her school's 800 students that were about to take the Maryland School Assessments in reading and math. "If anything, they'll have sweet breath," she said. "And if it provides a little boost . . ."
In the 1990s, researchers at University of Cincinnati found that a whiff of peppermint or muguet, a scent similar to lily of the valley, helped test subjects concentrate and do better on tasks that required sustained concentration. Joel Warm, a professor of psychology who conducted the research with his late colleague William Dember, said there is more than a bit of truth in the peppermint theory.
"Not only do you get an improvement [in focus] with peppermint, you get a change in response that affects alertness in target detection," he said.
Bryan Raudenbush, an associate professor of psychology at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia, found that athletes who had a sniff of peppermint performed better than those who didn't.
Heath E. Morrison, a community superintendent in Montgomery, said he heard the peppermint spiel at a seminar on brain research about three years ago. Now, several of the middle schools in his "cluster" -- E. Brooke Lee, Sligo, Argyle and Takoma Park -- sometimes distribute the candies.
This reminds me of lucky socks worn by athletes. I have heard that some are never washed in order to keep the luck intact. The main thing is to get the kids to care about the tests, and if peppermints help, so be it. Personally, I think cilantro has a better smell, but it might stain the answer sheets. I have also been in schools where principals promise to stand on the roof or shave their heads if students do well on state tests.
Paul Skilton-Sylvester, coordinator of elementary education at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, made this observation, with tongue planted firmly in cheek: "We've found that test scores go up when there's a steady diet of cheese steaks with provolone, in combination with exciting lessons that ask students to wrestle with important ideas connected to real world problems."
It's good to add a bit of fun and humor to the testing process.