|
TESTING AS A ROAD MAP
by Rev. David O. Jones
Testing is always a concern
with parents and students. It has become the custom to evaluate and assign
grades to a student based upon test results. Students become overly
concerned with test performance, resulting in a psychological tension when
facing a test. No student wants to see a question they can’t answer and no
parent wants to see a test paper with incorrect answers.
Successful entrepreneur
Robert Kiyosaki comes from a family of educators and has founded the
Excellerated Learning Institute. In his book “If You Want To Be Rich &
Happy, Don’t Go To School,” he proposes that our educational system is
teaching children how to be failures later in life by planting seeds of
failure. “Our educational system teaches that being right is more
important than learning what you don’t know. It rewards right answers and
penalizes us for making mistakes.”
The “system” has caused
us to allow a test to be the final determination in a student’s learning.
The parent-educator is conditioned by the “this-is-the-way-it’s-done”
syndrome to judge the student by test results and then continue. The student
then learns how bad it is to make a mistake and becomes more cautious about
the next test. The result is that more attention is focused on a 15 to 60
minute performance than on the increased knowledge the student has actually
obtained.
“Students are not taught
how to learn from mistakes. They are conditioned to believe mistakes are
bad. In real learning, however, mistakes are essential” (Kiyosaki). Most
people fail to try because they are afraid to try and fail. The Apostle
Peter is a good example for us in failure. He failed when he denied Christ
during Christ’s trial, yet he preached victoriously on Pentecost. He
failed again in his leadership of the church in Jerusalem when he joined
with the Judaizers and has to be confronted by Paul. Peter learned from
his mistakes. That is exactly what we are to do!
Student testing is an
opportunity to find out what the student still needs to learn. A test
should never be graded, recorded and discarded. The test should be the
road map for what needs to be studied more thoroughly. Each test should
answer the question, “Where do we go from here?” The student should be
trained, told, and encouraged again that the test is their opportunity to
guide their own learning.
We all need to know
what we don’t know, whether in spelling, in mathematics, or in life. It’s
the little pop quizzes and chapter tests in life that help us on our
journey.
RETURN TO ARTICLES INDEX
|
