January 18, 2006

• DUAL MAJOR: Education 101 & Writing 101
  COURSE: Writing about testing and traditional schools

  
  

  ASSIGNMENT: Write a thought provoking essay about traditional schools and testing.  You may have a central argument, or may opt to simply write a reflective piece that does not yet have a central argument. Your aim is to provoke thought, both in yourself and your readers.

  
  

  It’s funny, I was a political science major, but graduated knowing history on what I’d say was a 5th grade level.  Seriously!  And I obviously passed all my high school social studies classes, and I obviously survived 10 poli sci classes for my major.  What does this tell me?  First, it tells me that it’s possible to get by on life regardless of how much you learned in school.  Also, it tells me that grades are very good at masking what people really know. 

  
  

  The reason I say that I was at a 5th grade level after college, is because I believe that everything that is taught in h.s. social studies, a 10-year old could handle.  I was at Barnes & Nobles browsing through some of the test prep books for history, and was amazed by how easy it is to pass those things without knowing a thing about history.  Most of the questions are common sense, or simply geared more towards a student’s ability to reason through the question, than to actually know anything about history. 

  
  

  For example, interpreting basic graphs and charts!  I mean, come on!  That’s a 3rd grade skill they’re testing.  And questions such as, “which of the following statements are opinion rather than fact?”  That’s the least those kids should be able to do.  It’s funny, you can give 50 multiple choice questions, and say that if they get 30 right, they pass and can move to the next grade.  But, you can also go through those questions and weed out the ones that a 3rd grader should know, and ones that are essential for understanding anything about history (not essential for being in a certain grade, for being a certain age, or for most professions, but more importantly, for having the knowledge to be an educated voter).  For example, if you don’t know that capitalism and communism differ in their views on the role of gov’t in helping the people to live fulfilling lives, and you only see the two as good and evil, than you haven’t grasped an essential concept in understanding history and current events (not saying we should hold a kid back if they don’t know what I would describe as “essential knowledge”, because I believe holding a kid back in school has tremendously negative psychological effects on a kid…but because like I said, i graduated from college and have a job, and until recently had very little understanding about what those 2 terms meant).

  
  

  We’re only going to see more testing, not less, in the years to come.  If I end up having kids, the reality is they’re going to be tested (a good 10 years away, but coming soon).  However, I’m starting to shy away from the usual crowd of people who are yelling, “testing is bad,” or “testing is harmful to children.”  Why do I not fully buy into those mainstream arguments?  Because I think testing can be harmful only if the other important elements of education and learning are missing.  For example, if a kid at age 10 is already reading the New York Times (I’ve met them, there’s nothing freakish about it), and with proper guidance they’re being shown how to understand and figure out things they don’t know, than that kid can probably take a social studies test, and get an 85+ (I think very few adults would ace the very same tests their kids are subjected to), The kid also wouldn’t stress a bit about the test because the content would be easy to them, and because testing is just one of many challenges this kid has faced, and after the hour or two, they would go back to learning again.

  
  

  The bar for passing tests, I believe, is actually quite low.  I’m not saying I support testing, nor do I support efforts to “raise the bar,” by encouraging more testing.  I also don’t believe it’s necessarily right to base school funding on testing alone as the federal law of No Child Left Behind does, or to give students the false and I believe damaging impression that test scores are significant for future “success” in life. (except again, for gaining access to scholarship money or acceptance into a school that values grades highly).  But, while I am critical of testing, I do believe the problems aren’t ncecessarily just the tests themselves, but the instruction surrounding them. 

  
  

  From what I’ve read and heard, the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound schools, which don’t give tests to their students or grades, and instead have students do tremendous presentations and keep portfolios, and give students individual written evaluations to monitor their learning and to set furhter learning goals…and that don’t have individual and unrelated subjects like math, science, history, and English, but rather pursue project/problem based integrative and experiential learning, still produces better results than traditional schools when the students are ultimately subjected to mandatory state and federal exams. 

  
  

  I met a principal at one of these schools, the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning in Denver, Colorado, who said they don’t teach for the test.  Nor do they worry or stress about the test (although they realize doing well on tests is important in terms of receiving gov’t funding and in terms of public opinion).  These schools, these “progressive” schools that most of us never grew up in and have little-to-no exposure to from our peers or in the media, know that their system of education will naturally prepare kids better for the real challenges in life, including those pesky little tests.

  
  

  your thougts?

  • 11:40 am
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