Source: Aeon Media
Url: https://aeon.co/essays/can-school-today-teach-anything-more-than-how-to-pass-exams
Key points: According to the author, " For most teachers and students, the classroom experience is shaped, down to the last detail, by the requirement to prepare for examinations." The article goes on to encourage teachers to become Socratic Mentors, guiding their students toward answers rather than the mere providers of information. Furthermore it challenges the reader/teacher with the question, can we teach students how to think? The answer comes in the analogy of swimming. We must be given lessons, examples and OPPORTUNITIES to try out thinking on our own in supportive environments.
Intended audience: Teachers and Parents
Relevance: As special educators we are preparing our students for a vast array of options in life. Of course some will go on to higher education but many will not. Shifting our focus, and this will be difficult in the common core age, toward preparing our students to be problem solvers in life and contributing members of society is far more important, in my opinion, than preparing them to get a "passing" score on the OAKS test.
If I thought of a future, I dreamt of one day founding a school in which young people could learn without boredom, and would be stimulated to pose problems and discuss them; a school in which no unwanted answers to unasked questions would have to be listened to; in which one did not study for the sake of passing examinations. - Karl Popper
It's as though teachers are not trusted to teach what and how they are trained to teach. We are forced to fit teaching and learning into a specific, preordained box built by academic elites, bureaucrats, and politicians. Teaching to the test is the result of government imposed policies that often lack common sense, are out of touch, and are created without local control. What I see in the classroom is too much concern about the destination (the right answer) and not enough attention and interest in the process (Socratic learning). The school factory, cookie cutter assessment design is cost efficient, but not the best way to shape our students into critical, reflective thinkers who question assumptions and ingrained ideas. Of course good teachers can do this, but it's much more of a struggle when high stakes testing is involved.
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