Excerpts from:
Education as Ritual
Uncovering Standardization's Depths
By Christian M. Bednar (former high school English teacher; not owns a tutoring company in Marblehead, Mass.)
We're on a mission. And whether or not the student is a failing Johnny or an A-plus Sally, he or she is suffering infinitely at the hands of an educational environment armed with more research than ever promoting the importance of critical thinking, yet ignorantly content to wallow in a basal-reader mentality.
Accordingly, learning has effectively been stripped of both its beauty and its intrinsic value.
Eliminating our present evaluative system would do much to reverse the suffocating climate in many of our schools. This change requires neither an exceptional degree of innovative thinking nor a supplementary allocation of funding. What it does demand, however, is the recognition that the process of learning is intangible and immeasurable. When we attempt to quantify that which is unquantifiable, we destroy.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/04/08/28bednar.h28.html?tkn=YPMFOz8s0F4pOIsuA4CP6l0RhGjHZ9QQPAfm
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I think too much testing is going on in our schools - although I think tests if used for the right purpose have its merits. But like you said, authentic learning is a gift. Are we here just to create rote individuals or creative problem solvers?
ReplyDeleteusing a standard and measure are necessary, but i agree that the system has gotten reckless.
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