Главная страница «Первого сентября»Главная страница журнала «Английский язык»Содержание №9/2006

MECHOD OF TEACHING

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