Some Educational Implications of Honest
Assessment
Introduction: A Stand Against Standardized Testing
The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) announces its opposition to
“high-stakes” testing; the practice of using standardized test results to prohibit
students from graduating or advancing to the next grade. These test results offer only a
partial assessment of students’ capabilities, and force teachers and students to focus
on a more narrow and superficial curriculum. While pledging support for rigorous
coursework and challenging standards, CES proposes an alternate system of determining
student advancement. The group recommendes the use of broader and deeper assessments such
as exhibitions and portfolios, requiring students to use more skills to demonstrate
mastery of an entire curriculum. CES explained that such assessments reflect significant
intellectual achievement over time, rather than information-cramming and “test prep”
for considerable parts of the year.
Methods: Humanity as a Microcosm Virtual mental organs
We propose an organic approach to higher brain functions, i.e. the
definition of virtual organs to perform the mental functions which are too subtle and
versatile for traditional description. These would reflect physiological as well as
ethological, psychological knowledge gathered about humans and other animals in their
cognitive performance. Knowledge could flow, be enriched or purified in such an organ-like
body fluid, and a decision or a judgment could be excreted. The advantage of this
description lies in a clear-cut, self-consistent account for diverse results achieved in a
wide variety of investigations. The “development” of these virtual organs would also
be manifested in the related knowledge on inter-species as well as individual evolution.
This unified description reflects how genetic, environmental,
nurturing, educational, societal, etc. factors influence the underlying mental functions
(“mental” meaning, in the appropriate sense when referring to non-humans).
Accordingly, the role of these factors in the process of evolution that results in the
highest, specifically human kinds of cognitive functions would be explained. This way,
expectations can be formulized on how new qualities in the information society should
support these organs.
However virtual these organs are, an understanding of their properties
may prove to be highly useful in the utilization as well as the development of the
underlying mental functions. Thus, the insight these organs may provide could be explored
in a host of cognitive tasks, e.g. in social behavior, and in how to be prepared for them,
in education. It is important to stress the inherent difference of this (rather
Aristotelian) approach of “Natural Philosophy” from that of the now usual Neoplatonian
and more mechanistic ideology which has been used in modern science since the triumph of
Newtonian Celestial Mechanics. Representatives of the latter always try to link some often
incompatible varieties, while we try to do the opposite – develop a set of varieties
from a common basic set of principles. In this introduction into the Arphenic
(Aristotelian Phenomenology) investigation of the human mind we can only demonstrate how
such a basic model acts in the conditions of non-experimental observations of the natural
phenomena in the field of social relations. The main object that attracts the
researcher’s attention is the effect produced “by the latent coincidence in the
observed phenomena”.
Such study cannot be productive without a universal (although rather
common for human intuition) egocentric model of an active personal Microcosm. It permits
viewing man as the epitome of the universe with a lot of virtual organs.We proclaim anew
the two characteristics of classical Greek science. The first was the view of the universe
as an ordered structure (in Greek Cosmos means “order”). Secondly the conviction that
this order is not that of a mechanical contrivance but that of an organism. This has
permitted us to form a kind of simple Ideological theory on the basis of habitual
commonsense. But in a sense we are obliged to agree that all parts of the universe have
their own purposes in the overall scheme of things. They move naturally toward the ends
they were fated to serve. Now all that seems quite silly in the context of modern
Neoplatonian science. In order to avoid the danger of seeming an exotic sect of
“Hippocratic” activity in research, education and of the activities of life, we shall
try to show some “practical” examples of our research based on observing the unusual
coincidences which are often undervalued in more mechanistic investigations.
Procedures: Mechanistic Origins of Grade Schooling
About 20 years ago we established the grade-schooling mechanism
resembling that of a corn mill. Having noticed that its main inventor Comenius was a
miller’s son, we drew some very important conclusions. We even discovered an inverse
historical dependence: the grade schooling (producing obedient labor) was the cause of the
Industrial Revolution, not vice versa, as some still think. Trying (for two decades) to
overcome the demerits of grade schooling we finally noticed they are caused by the
unnatural exams based on testing the pupil’s memory of texts mistaken for
“knowledge”. It forms a perverse purpose for the whole class-schooling practice.
In fact all schools are able to teach some sorts of “literacy” –
more or less smart dealing with texts of manuals, which help to solve home tasks. But
exams test a student’s memory, thus establishing a false “inner” purpose of the
whole educational system.
About a century ago John Dewey proved it was impossible to directly
transfer alien “knowledge” or any classroom procedure. But only a few teachers and
parents follow his advice to eliminate the grading exams on memorizing. They send their
children to “democratic” or park-schools where no exams exist. In this way we often
deprive our students of very important (for some of them) external stimuli to continue
their studies. It made us propose an amendment in the form of a legalized “Open exam”
in which pupils are allowed to use any “external” formation they might need at the
exam. But the educational community still regards such an amendment as an attempt to
destroy the system of education itself.
Results: Finnish Experiment
In 2004 we had the chance to prove that it only strengthens educational
systems. The last PISA (Project International on Student Assessment) report has confirmed
that the Open exam was successfully introduced in Finland several years ago and proved to
be very beneficial to the whole education system in that country. It is very important
that for its last Report PISA has studied not the “knowledge”, but the functional
literacy of graduates, which is what we also insisted on for many years. The Report
contained the ratings of 36 national educational systems. Finland won the highest grade.
In an article by a Finnish professor, published together with the PISA-report, among many
standard (for liberal education) innovations, they have mentioned that “students can use
any informational materials in the exams, including the Internet. Teachers examine HOW the
child CAN USE all the information”. The fact that the Open exam was introduced long
before all the other innovations (which are more picturesque, of course) can prove that it
is the PRINCIPAL CAUSE of the success. It is quite possible that the high educational
results in Finland have been achieved, because almost all of the students are stimulated
by the Open exam, alone so widely used there. It needs to be proved in more detail, of
course. Thus, by mere coincidence (of PISA starting to study the functional
‘’literacy”, while Finnish officials legalized the Open exams) our little, mainly
theoretical “sect” preaching the Open exam has returned to the mainstream.
Discussion
It is evident that all schooling misfortunes may be neither caused by
(the “good” nor the “ill” will of some responsible people, but – by the
dysfunctional infrastructure of grade schooling. The latter is caused by the incorrect
assumption that schools are designed to TEACH (alien ready-made knowledge), while really
they have to perform another function – that of CARE and supervising personal
development of their pupils. As soon as the principal aim of schooling is corrected, e.g.
by means of introducing more functional “Open exams”, as they did in Finland, the
contents of education will switch to developing all sorts of Functional Literacies in
dealing with the notions of various school-subjects. Consequently, a lot of its
infrastructure might become much more functional irrespective of the intentions of those
responsible for education.
The ancient Confucian principle; “I listen and I forget, I see and I
remember, I do and I learn” not only confirms that idea of ‘certifying proficiency’
as an entrepreneurial opportunity. But the latter also becomes a natural means of
re-establishing finite goals in education which now seem quite infinite. It still expands
in time, due to the vicious circle formed by the evidently perverse aim of schooling.
Twenty-five centuries ago people knew (that it was impossible to transfer verbal knowledge
which can at best be only “heard and forgotten”. Grade schooling ideology is the main
cause of rejecting this holistic approach of decentralized planning and productive
activity. And this vicious circle of criticizing more sound ways (as unrealistic in highly
urbanized and industrialized societies) now can be broken. It is easy to predict that
“the traditional diploma-granting organizations, for example universities, are going to
become obsolete”. All of us feel it, and there seems to be only one decent way out –
which we might call “the Honest Confucian diploma”. It will have a certain commercial
opportunity, too. Some kind of Direct (coming directly to the teacher, but not to the
officials) Voucher will do it quite safely from a social standpoint.
Conclusion
But the certification should be liberal enough; otherwise even the
liberated school service might be wrongly based on memorizing. They will proceed in
breaking the natural social life of children before age-segregated schooling consisted of
groups with an even distribution of ages from eight to twenty-two. Not so long ago
research carried out by some juvenile justice experts, developed the hypothesis that youth
crime results from an age-segregated youth culture.
Liberal restriction of schooling is quite necessary. It can be
successfully achieved by separating schooling and certification. “If one were to be able
to gain credibility as a certifier of proficiency why would someone go to a college in
order to ‘certify that they know what they know?’ There should be some other good
reasons for not paying the money to go to college. You could just pay a certifier, which
wouldn’t cost as much as a college education.
Laura Stine has recently found some data on the Research Channel on her
satellite. It was full of hand-wringing college administrators recognizing that very fact.
They are worried that students are finding better ways to learn math than in classes of
300 taught by professors-in-training. But the 300+ classes pay for the smaller graduate
classes. The participants were trying to talk each other into marketing college as a
‘life experience.’ They know that there are so many other ways to learn things than in
their classes and there are only going to be more in the future.
In a survey, she has read, college students reported that their most
valuable learning experiences had occurred in student-organized-small-study-groups. If
that’s the case, anyone can do that…all they have to do is find a way to get certified
that they know what they learned. The Jefferson Diploma could have its own non-profit
organization offering its services as another means of certifying proficiency. I guess it
could be like the GED operation.
Miloslav Balaban
Moscow State University,
Russia
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