Thinking vs. testing

Like most people, I love it when I find kindred spirits -- you know, those people with whom you agree. Finding this article came at a good time for me. I am down about some of my college students, so it's especially nice to find a person -- a Harvard person, no less -- who voiced many of my opinions about what schools need to be teaching and doing.

In Seven skills students desperately need, author Meris Stansbury talks about a keynote address delivered by Harvard's Tony Wagner in which he says that while schools may be successfully teaching to the test, kids are leaving schools without the survival skills that they need for the real world. Bravo! My sentiments, exactly! Wagner relates how he has visited schools where students just wait for the teacher or a star student to give them the answers -- even if a Bunsen burner is smoking!

In my student evaluations, it is not uncommon for someone to write something along these lines ... "When we ask you a question, you should just answer it. Don't ask us a question." And a few weeks ago, when I passed out an exam to my students, I told them not to get caught up in whether to say yes, no, or maybe in response to an essay question, because I would be grading them on the "why" behind the yes, no, or maybe. Several students groaned in agony. Ever since I started teaching college more than two years ago, I have noticed that students do not like to think. "Just tell us the answer!" is written all over their faces. I am constantly telling them that to succeed in college and in life, they have to think! They can't just memorize all the right answers, because usually there is not a single right answer.

One of the reasons that schools fail is because they are trying to get students to memorize a bunch of stuff that they will forget as soon as they take the test. The emphasis is on "knowing" the right answer, rather than critically thinking to figure out what one answer might be. Whether I am at home or in a classroom, I rarely give a straightforward answer to a child's or student's query, because no one should look at me as the expert on everything. Students should realize that they can figure out the answer on their own. One of the my favorite things as an unschooling mom was to hear my young children talk about how they taught themselves to do something.

When people ask me if I think that the state should have oversite of homeschooled students, I quickly respond no. Why? Because no doubt that would include testing, and then homeschooling parents would start making the same mistake that public school teachers are forced to make -- teaching to the test. Educators know that teaching to the test ultimately fails students, because it doesn't teach them to think. But it is legislators, not educators, who make the laws. They want quantitative proof that students know something. And I suppose they get proof that students know something -- but standardized tests do not prove that students can think.

How do you define success?

A lot of people get caught up in the question of success ... will my child be successful if we homeschool? Well, it's tough to be less successful than the public schools. My last post talked about how some public school graduates are incapable of critical thinking. But the sadder half of that equation are the kids who never graduate from high school. According to HigherEdInfo.org, the high school graduation rate for 2005 was 68.8% in the United States. It varied tremendously from state to state with New Jersey having 87.6% graduation rate and Nevada having only 49.1% of entering ninth graders completing high school. If high school graduation is your criteria, then I have been successful with all three of my children, since they have all started college. I don't think high school graduation is a huge hurdle for most homeschoolers.

What about success in college? HigherEdInfo says that only 29.1% of students at community college receive their associate degree within three years. My oldest daughter did receive her first associate degree within three years, so she succeeded. My son did not finish an associate degree within three years, but then that was never his goal. He just wanted to take a class or two for fun. So, now we are getting into a gray area ... how do you define success? Was he not successful?

We have become a multiple choice society, and I can't help but believe that it comes from the fact that virtually all of us went to public schools, where answers to every question were either A, B, C, D, or E.

How do you become a success in America?
A. Get good grades in school
B. Graduate from high school
C. Graduate from college
D. Homeschool
E. A, B, and C

Most people choose E without question. Every semester, I've had at least one student confess to me that she didn't want to be in college. Usually several students tell me this every semester. But, they are "forced" to go to college by their parents. When I ask them what interests them, they either say that they don't know, or they want to do something that does not require a college degree. In May, one girl told me she wanted to be a personal trainer like her dad, who didn't have a college degree and was quite successful. But her dad believed a college degree was absolutely essential for his daughter to be successful.

Many of those students will not be graduating. With no personal motivation to be there and no goals, they don't try very hard, and many of them wind up on academic probation at the end of their first semester. They fail. But I'm not saying they fail because they flunk out of college. I'm saying they fail because they waste a year of their life following someone else's path, rather than exploring or moving towards their personal goals.

My daughter started college at age 13 and received her first associate degree at age 16. Although she was accepted into five universities to complete her bachelor's degree, she decided to stay at the community college to continue exploring different subject areas. After earning two more associate degrees and still not being sure what she wanted to pursue for her bachelor's, I suggested that she take off a couple years and explore the real world. She worked in retail for a year and a half, which became a very frustrating time for her because so many friends were wringing their hands about her impending poverty in life. A few good friends, who knew her well, were not concerned at all. We knew that she was highly motivated and a perfectionist, and she would find the path that was right for her.

When she started the job, she loved it as she was learning how to do everything. Once she'd mastered her job, she started to hate it. She applied for a management position, and she was promoted. She loved it as she was learning to do everything. Once she'd mastered that job, she started to hate it. Do you see a trend here? She did. She learned something very valuable about herself -- something she would have never learned in school. It was something I knew, but it was something she had to learn for herself. She needs a job that can't be learned in a few weeks or a couple months. She needs something that constantly challenges her mind.

I don't define success with something simplistic like a college degree or a high-paying job. Success is not reached by following a straight line from high school to college to Wall Street. Success is not a destination. It's a journey up and down winding roads and across wide open fields. It's a journey that never ends as long as you're motivated to keep going.