Chris Harris, of Infomancy, and currently attending the E-Learning Symposium in New York, quoted one of my recent posts about the time we spend teaching and the time our students spend learning. He supports my assertions by quoting Alan November (this always makes me look good). He (Chris) says
Learning can take place many different places at many different times. Learning, unlike teaching, doesn’t happen in 42 minute blocks. I had a great experience in my educational administration courses when we had to go out and observe learning instead of observing teaching.
I have a personal theory that has started haunting me after reading The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. Many countries have been out-performing us on standardized tests for a very long time. But for a very long time, we continued to hold a deserved leadership position in the world. Why? I believe that our edge has been our creativity, our innovative way of solving problems. I grew up in post-World War II America, and they called it Yankee Ingenuity.
Did this nature toward innovation come from our schools. Partly, I believe that it did. I remember, when I was in school, my parents valuing my teachers based on how they motivated students to learn, and that came from classrooms that were interesting, that did new things. Now granted, not all of my teachers were innovative, and I can think of only a few who were extraordinarily motivating. But I do remember that the classrooms I learned the most in — the ones that shaped me — were the ones where we didn’t get past the Civil War. These classes went deep. Not broad.
But that’s not my theory. My theory is that we were creative because we were one of the only societies that gave their children a childhood. We played. I couldn’t wait for school to end, so that I could go out and play — and playing mostly meant pretending. When and where I grew up, I got toys only at Christmas and on my birthday. The rest of the year, if I wanted a toy, I went to my fathers woodworking shop, found the scrap wood that I could shape into the toy I wanted, straightened some nails, and hammered away. In my head, the fastened-together wood became what I was pretending it to be.
Are we doing their future a service or our own, by stealing our children’s childhoods for the sake of test scores? How much is this like Child Labor?
2¢ Worth
Dave,
Just to add to your point here are a couple entries from my 5th grade student Blogs this week as students finished the IOWA test. I believe they tell the story.
IOWA test
10/13
IOWA test has started and gone by so fast! Then before you know it the E.R.B. test will come. Then we will be in 6th grade. Then we’ll have exams. NO!
Then we’ll be in college. IN college we have big tests and that will affect our life. NO!
ITBS Testing
10/14
I’m relieved that ITBS testing is over. I don’t really hate it, but it can be pretty boring filling in bubbles. We have to skip a lot of subjects too. We skipped: Writer’s Workshop, Reader’s Workshop, Math, Read Aloud, and Science. We even skipped snack time once! The questions aren’t really hard for me, but sometimes you have to work really fast. (eg. the Math Computation part) All-in-all, I’m glad ITBS testing is over. Whew!
Finally Over
10/13
Oh! The IOWA test is finally over today! The last test was on math computation. Anyways the test overall was not super hard, but normally hard. The test itself is so awful; I just hate it so much that I wanted to throw the test in the trash can. But, I do not dare to, for if I do, my mother will say, “Why did you throw the test away, you will be punished forever.” (Came from a song)
More Learning, Less Testing
Jeff
I am interested in these comments above….. my students feel the same way…. I would say that we need to realise that teachers use testing for different reasons – Most of which are invalid today if we are going to consider the nature of the learner and the information environment that they are growing up in. My studetns seem to feel that the world revolves around testing and that you sit tests so you can see how good you are and who you are better than or who is better than you…. Sad idea when you really think about it. I raise this many times with staff and question why we do so much testing, at the state level and the school level. It seems a waste of time when the learner could be engaged in something so much more benificial. The irony of all this is that I am about to head off to a 90min staff meething this afternoon to discuss the most recent results of the state testing!! A test that many students ended up getting frustrated with and saw no relavence in.