TO TEST OR NOT TO TEST

I am familiar with all tests we already use and the ones that are coming in the near future. The future does not look very promising. In the past I was always defending state tests. I really believed that in this old failing system of education test preparation had been the only working motivation and a class management tool. To control the behavior and outcomes I used to bring the topic of regents prep and everybody would start working.

Not any more. This motivation does not work at all. I always knew that the change would come from the kids, not from a new administration or politician. I could not imagine how exactly the new will grow out of this old and festered system. Now I see it. The kids do not care any longer if they pass or fail, they do not want to learn for the test, they do not want to learn abstract stuff we had obediently memorized and happily forgot as soon as the test was over. Our children refuse to play this hypocritical game of pretending that they are coming to school to learn something to pass a test.

In reality they learn something in spite of the school hindering.

There are too many adults though who are playing the game, pretending that they are doing something important, and using the taxpayers’ money for their own benefit. Because these adults need to prove all the time how their “job” is so important, they create more and more tests, and exchange one test with another one. The salary keeps on coming. They completely changed the job of a teacher as an educator into a babysitter.

There are still too many really good teachers who will move on into the future together with the kids. Those teachers will help the kids to learn what’s important for them. The English teachers will pick books to read that will be relative to the kids lives. The math teachers will bring problems relevant to real life too. History teachers will relate the past with the future. The Science teachers will help to understand how the surrounding world works. And all of them will use all kinds of art, games, sports, theatre, concerts, exhibitions, performances, technology and quiet time to just sit alone if the kid needs it.