Publishing league tables makes national testing high stakes - we want our students to do well in them. Our pay may even be related to student performance in them. So we spend our classroom time teaching how to pass the test.
Some kids pass the test. What have they actually learned?
Some kids don't pass the test. What have they actually learned?
What about subjects that are not tested - sport? music? art?
This test obsessed culture leads to students who are apathetic. Their learning is limited to how to pass the tests in reading, writing and maths. I believe this type of education is partly responsible for spawning the Y-generation - "Why bother?" They were passive recipients of an education devoid of passion, devoid of values, devoid of joy, devoid of wonderment, devoid of any engagement with the process of real learning. Their test scores improved over time, but their 'education' dried up with each new practice test. What positive action did their learning lead to? Just another, probably more difficult, test. Why bother?
I was both a teacher and a student in this type of system and I am totally gutted that it is happening now in NZ, just as the UK and USA are counting the costs of their education blunders both socially and economically.
I believe current testing systems, as in our own NCEA are already completely obsolete in their current form. The National Government 's failure to recognise this is sending us back to Victorian ideas about education. Moreover, they are inflicting this senselessness on children as young as six in order for them to be better able to pass equally senseless tests at age sixteen!
I cant recall the Greek philosopher, but I remember the quote about teaching a man, not what to think, but how to think. Pencil and paper testing only enables the tested to show what they have remembered - utterly useless in modern times, when you think about it.
I was intrigued by Professor Sugata Mitra, who called for internet-connected devices to be taken into the exam hall. He argues:
Let's look at examinations. At about AD1000 there used to be an entrance examination in an Indian university where the student was expected to orally answer the gateman; that's why it was called an entrance examination. If he couldn't, the student had to go back home. He could use nothing other than his mind and his voice.
There was a great jump after about a thousand years. Somebody said no, we must enable the person we're examining with technology. We can give him a piece of paper and a pencil. So now teachers had to prepare students to use that new technology to answer questions. Recitation became less important. I suggest that we just make one similar change.
Allow a tablet connected to the internet to be brought in to the examination hall. Take away the paper and pencil and say this time you have to answer the GCSE (NCEA) differently. All you have is a tablet. You can email your friends, you can look up on the internet, do whatever you like. And answer the questions.
I believe that if we do that the entire system will change. Teachers are intelligent people; they will start to immediately teach differently. A tablet can tell you what to think, but it will never be able to tell you how to think.....
or how to discriminate....
or how to be genuinely creative....
or how to argue...
or how to think critically....
or how to reflect....
or how to be genuinely creative....
or how to argue...
or how to think critically....
or how to reflect....
A test obsessed system does not strengthen or develop these things either.
Put a tablet into an examination hall. It's a small input. The entire system will self-organise. We may then have a chance to help foster the next generation of actively involved, confident, connected, lifelong learners.
