Standardized Kids?

J. Kevin Tumlinson

Not to give anybody flashbacks of traumatic high school pop-quizzes, but I'd like you to take the following True/False test:

1. All students are the same.
2. The best approach for determining if a child is learning something is to ask him questions about something else.
3. In order for students to be competitive in college and the workforce, they should be taught only to pass one type of test.
4. Any information that cannot be made into a multiple choice question should be disregarded.
5. There is no need to prepare students for what they will experience in college.
6. Grammar and mechanics are not important in writing.

If you answered "True" to any of the questions above, congratulations. You are a member of an education agency or a school administrator. If you answered all questions as "False," then you are a normal, rational human being who is seemingly powerless to affect change in society.

Meet the Enemy

The enemy is "standardized tests." Who thought of these things? Seriously, who decided that the best way to promote the education of a student was to cram useless facts and mediocre problem solving skills down their throats?

• Ask any individual who studies education and you will quickly realize that NO ONE likes standardized testing. It has a host of problems that make it completely unviable as a means of assessment. Here's the short list:
• The tests are often biased against any student who is not Caucasian, not born in America, does not speak English as a primary language or anyone below the poverty line.
• Curriculum is geared towards simply passing the test instead of preparing students for college or the workforce.
• A ton of tax dollars every year goes into "educating" teachers about what will be on the standardized tests - information that is usually redundant or completely outside the scope of any given subject area.
• While this money is being spent to inform teachers about the tests, the state and federal governments do not offer ANY suggestions or guidelines for teaching the material. Teachers are left to "discuss among themselves" their options for implementing the material.

The answer to our education woes, however, lies in another direction.

Teaching to Think

What if I could promise that grades could be improved, test scores could be higher, and students could be better prepared for college and the workforce and life in general? Ok, I can hear you calling me on it, so here it is. The answer is "critical thinking."

It's not enough to teach a kid how to write an essay (five paragraphs, five sentences per paragraph, topic sentence, supporting details, conclusion, elaborate). Anyone can memorize a formula. But you and I know that the problems that pop up in every day life can't always be solved by a formula. Sometimes you just have to think.

So I'm encouraging teachers to start making students think. The simplest way to begin is to start asking questions. When the kids come in, sit on the corner of your desk and ask them what the best movie is and why. They'll get loud. They'll get excited. They'll all talk and criticize and demand attention. That's where the teacher comes in, moderating and listening and commenting and listening some more. The point is, the kids are no longer sitting idly and staring at the holes in each ceiling tile. They're participating - they're LISTENING. And while they're listening to THAT, you can use a little verbal trickery and start inserting OTHER things.

To use our movie example, you could open a discussion on how to make the movie better, and let that lead to characterization and plot. Or you can talk about the budget of a film and lead into a discussion of home budgeting. The point is to use the student's interests and natural enthusiasm for a topic and relate them to the subject material. It creates connections in the kids' minds, and allows them to start seeing the world from different angles.

Fun for Teachers AND Parents!

And you don't have to be a teacher to do this. Parents, you can do the same thing. Relate skateboarding to geometry (ever seen a half-pike?). Talk to your kids about the differences between the Matrix and the way computers work in the "real" world (is it the real world? Did I take the blue pill or the red one?). Teach your children what it means to think creatively and to solve problems by using their minds. The world will be better for it. And maybe we can ditch the standardized tests once and for all.

One more thing... I think that the best piece of wisdom I've heard on the subject of standardized testing has been this:

We don't have standardized kids, why would we have standardized tests for them?

J. Kevin Tumlinson is a writer and a schoolteacher living in Lake Jackson, TX. He's thinking critically RIGHT NOW.