Test Driven Teaching Isn't Character Driven

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

TEST-DRIVEN TEACHING ISN'T CHARACTER DRIVEN
NO CHILD LEFT UNTESTED IS POLITICIANS' ANSWER TO BETTER EDUCATION.
WHAT ABOUT BETTER PEOPLE?
Philadelphia Inquirer Column - - June 7, 2006
by Colman McCarthy

No group is enjoying a greater high right now than the nation's 
testocrats, as students across the land finish up another year of 
test-driven education. These children, frightened by the fear of 
failure, are using their minds not to think but to perform.

For whom? Aside from the profit-hungry testing industry, it's mainly for 
politicians whose notion of No Child Left Untested is their answer to 
the latest report that all those well-drilled Japanese and Chinese kids 
are years ahead of America's slackers. Perform well on the tests, goes 
the meritocratic message, and all rungs on the ladder to success will be 
easily climbed.

Having taught in high schools for 25 years, I have seen no evidence that 
mastering tests helps students become kinder, more loving, or more 
adventuresome. Often, it's the opposite. Preparing for Advance Placement 
or International Baccalaureate tests, they become idea- and 
fact-memorizers, not idea- and fact-analyzers. Fearful of not doing 
well, students give in to anxiety. Cowed, they obsess over grades - and 
ignore Walker Percy's irrefutable truth that you can make all A's in 
school and go flunk life.

High school students who instinctively protest tests become spiritual 
dropouts, showing up for school physically but thinking their own 
thoughts, while test-giving teachers prattle on about what to study for 
the next Big One.

Having taught courses on nonviolence to more than 7,000 high school, 
college and law school students since 1982, as well as lecturing at 
hundreds of schools from the nation's wealthiest to its poorest, I have 
seen enough to know that, too often, test-happy schools are merely 
processing the young like slabs of cheese going to Velveeta Elementary 
on the way to Cheddar High and Mozzarella U.

Carol Rinzler describes it in Your Adolescent: An Owner's Manual:

Little Kimberly asks her high-achieving parents: "If they tell you in 
nursery school that you have to work hard so that you'll do well in 
kindergarten, and if they tell you in kindergarten that you have to work 
hard so you'll do well in high school, and if they tell you in high 
school that you'll have to work hard so you'll get into a good college, 
and assuming they tell you in college that you have to work hard so you 
get into a good graduate school, what do they tell you in graduate 
school that you have to work hard for?"

Mom and Dad tell Kimberly: "To get a good job so you can make enough 
money to send your children to a good nursery school."

Tests represent fear-based learning, not desire-based learning. As a 
pacifist, I see tests as forms of academic violence. I have never 
insulted my high school students by giving them exams.

Instead, I give my students plenty of quizzes, starting with 
character-driven questions. When did you last thank the school's 
janitors for keeping the toilets clean? How often do you express 
appreciation to the cafeteria workers for cooking the food every day? 
How often do you tell someone that you love them? And show them with 
deeds? Have you done a favor recently for someone who didn't even know 
you did it? Are you a talker or a doer? Are you a person who is 
self-centered or other-centered? What are you doing to make your 
parents' lives a bit easier? Are you living simply so others may simply 
live?

I'd rather have a class full of students who are mindful of what 
matters, rather than a class of students with minds full of what least 
matters: how to get ahead by acing tests. America has enough brainy 
people ready to serve the interests of the ruling elite, but not enough 
caring people to challenge its materialism and militarism.

When I asked some of my students recently whether they were better 
people for having taken their AP and IB tests in other classes, none 
answered yes. Most said they were frazzled. Some believed they had been 
conned into thinking the tests mattered. A few, indeed, were glad they 
took the tests. For them, it's now on to Mozzarella U. to strive for 
4.0s, and seek out Kimberly as a best study pal.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colman McCarthy (cmccarthy@starpower.net 
<mailto:cmccarthy@starpower.net>) is director of the Center for Teaching 
Peace, in Washington.

 http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/14756505.htm