When assessing a child
as a whole it is important to make sure they understand the basics. Does the child know enough mental math and
pre algebra to grocery store, complete household projects, balance a budget,
cook, etc. Can they read well enough to
understand a legal document, a newspaper article, the label on a prescription
bottle. Do they understand enough science
to know the impact of pollution on the environment, understand the impact of
disruptions in the food chain, realize that to grow a tomato plant the plant needs
sunlight etc. basically, the basic book
knowledge we should be testing for is the knowledge required for survival and
everyday living. outside of that, a
child should be assessed on three things. 1)What do they want to do? 2)What are they good at? 3)How does their environment affect their
opportunities to develop strengths and inadvertently aggravate weaknesses or
gaps in learning?
If you have a boy who
can’t sit still, abhors homework, but loves to build things, instead of trying
to force him into a box that is unnatural, he should be allowed to enter an apprenticeship
program for construction or other trade.
If you have a girl who is a natural writer and artist and can create
beautiful graphics on the computer, why re we focused on trying to make her
learn advanced chemistry and calculus?
She doesn’t need it or want it.
Instead the focus should be on identifying where a child can and wants
to fit into society and then developing them along that path.
While visiting an
Ammonite farm in Brazil run by a small community (this farm feeds nearly all of
the country), the Minister of my religious organization asked the leader of this
farming community what type of education its members received. The Minister stated the man told him that
their community members go to the eight grade and no more, but that “we know how to count money very well.” So this community of people run a national
farming business but don’t go beyond the eight grade. Is this because after the eight grade the
basic reading, writing and math they need they have already learned and from
then education is geared towards what they need to know of business, agriculture,
accounting, etc in order to run their farm?
To me this seems to be a perfect system of education.
As far as assessing
children goes, task based assessment is, in my opinion, the most genuine form
of assessment. It asks students to apply
what they know in real life circumstances to show learning. In Africa at universities such as the University
of Pretoria in South Africa, students entering tertiary education are assessed
for their language literacy using a simple, 60 minute task based test that has
been proven to be efficient and reliable.
“The test sets out to assess . . academic literacy in a number of task
types . .” (Weideman, 2006) that include
identifying sentences from types of texts, restoring he original order of a
scrambled paragraph and reading graphs.
In New Zealand, school
aged children with special needs are being assessed by teachers using narrative
assessment, a type of “learning story” I which the teacher writes an account of
the child and his/her learning experiences throughout the day. this allows the teacher to capture the child
as a whole and explain how the child is using skills and thinking in the course
of an entire day in order to show learning, rather than relying on a pen and
paper test which might not accurately reflect the child. “A string of one or more learning stories
highlights the student’s learning in the key competency or competencies and the
learning area(s). Each learning story
includes a section with next step suggestions for future teaching an learning.” (Ministry of Education)
I think these are both
examples of assessing a child as a whole rather than according to a set group of
learning standards which, frankly, I doubt actually apply to most children and
the lives they are going to lead.
References
Weidemen,
Albert. "Assessing Academic Literacy In A Task Based Approach."
University of Pretoria, 2006. Web.
"Narrative
Assessment: A Guide for Teachers." New Zealand Ministry of Education, n.d.
Web. 9 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.throughdifferenteyes.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/57925/Narrative-Assessment_a-guide-for-teachers.pdf>.
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