High-Stakes Testing

In my book, High-Stakes Testing needs to be destroyed: it’s just another name for slavery.  Cast off every manmade yoke of human bondage.

Testing, carefully and reasonably used, has always been an important teaching tool: it helps focus the student and the teacher on what is most important.

Testing, carelessly and thoughtlessly used, has always been a cruel and abusive form of bullying and persecution: it attempts to force turtles to fly and eagles to crawl.

High-Stakes Testing tends to the latter description.  It is ludicrous to believe that all children can be pounded into the same mold, any more than square pegs can be coerced into round holes.  In the current situation, the “losers” are declared to be non-persons: and we will eventually reach the place where we demand that they be euthanized.  In firm opposition to this wretched idea, we steadfastly refuse to accept the idea that any child is a loser, defective, a non-person.  We reject High-Stakes Testing as a cruel, outrageous, and unworkable idea.

What needs to take place in national testing is J. K. Rowling’s Sorting Hat.  We need to identify each child as the precious individual that they are.  Then we need to custom design their education for them.  Finally, we need to make a place at the community table that grants respect for each one, and recognizes them for the person they are.

“Impossible!” you say.  Perhaps.  Granted that much of this individual customization must be left to the individuals themselves.  However, maybe we might acknowledge that the kid who loves carpentry and wood, should possibly become a carpenter.  If carpentry does not require the mastery of algebra, maybe that individual shouldn’t be forced to learn it.  If carpentry does not require a college education, perhaps budding carpenters shouldn’t be forced to endure it.  If carpentry is best taught by hands-on experience, maybe we should put those classes back in our high schools.  If carpentry is best learned by apprenticeship, perhaps fourteen year olds should be given work permits to pursue carpentry.

We have virtually driven all the cobblers out of the United States or at least put them out of gainful jobs.  Cobbling used to be a respected trade.  Today, the five dollar Ked has been replaced by the one-hundred fifty dollar Nike.  Today, that is popular.  But the day will come when we deeply regret this historic fact, and our own stupidity in bringing it about.  When all jobs are gone, even engineering and professional ones, and all work is done by computers and robots, then we will mourn the loss of cobblers.  When only the highest-ranking upper class is left with income, and all others are declared sub-human, then we will get the point.

Not everyone needs to go to college.  Some kids need to become carpenters or shoemakers.  In a well-ordered society, the carpenter and shoemaker may, at times, be more valuable than the wealthy and the educated: the doctor, lawyer, or engineer.  In a well-ordered society, everyone has a seat at the table, everyone gets respect, even the severely challenged are loved.  It is this sort of sacrificial love that makes us human, not our fanaticism to climb to the top.  It is stupid to love things, and use people....

We have lost our way.  We have forgotten that a man or woman is more important than a computer, a machine, a robot.  We have learned to love our automobile more than our neighbor: and we speak of it in the most intimate sexually suggestive manner.  Perhaps we already love our smart-phones more than our wives.  My fellow lemmings, we are going in the wrong direction.  Will it take yet another World War to fix it?

In my book, High-Stakes Testing needs to be destroyed: it’s just another name for slavery.  Cast off every manmade yoke of human bondage.