"How representative is the WESTEST as a "measure of success" in the classroom? All you folks out there taking tests this week...let me know what you think. Are students tested too much, not enough, or just in the wrong way? What do you think?"
This was my most recent post to my blog. As I was checking this evening, Shawn had left me a comment that I praise him for and I TOTALLY agree with...please read Shawn's response and make further comments...
Shawn wrote, "In the wrong way. My opinion may seem pretty radical, but I believe that we shouldn't test how much the students remember or don't remember. John Taylor Gatto thinks standardized tests are a useless indicator of ability, wishing students to be assessed strictly on performance
"Institutionalized schooling seeks to quantify the unquantifiable – human growth."
In Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich calls for the disestablishment of schools. He claims that schooling confuses teaching with learning, grades with education, diplomas with competence, attendance with attainment, and, especially, process with substance. He writes that schools do not reward real achievement, only processes. Schools inhibit a person's will and ability to self-learn, ultimately resulting in psychological impotence. He claims that forced schooling perverts the victims' natural inclination to grow and learn and replaces it with the demand for instruction. Further, the current model of schooling, replete with credentials, betrays the value of autodidactic education. Moreover, institutionalized schooling seeks to quantify the unquantifiable – human growth. For Illich, creative, exploratory learning requires an individual's own initiative to truly impact the learner positively. He calls for learning networks that would allow people with similar interests to communicate and explore problems together. The Internet makes his dream eminently realizable (Illich, 1970).
-source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#Criticism
You should read it. Interesting stuff! "
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