There is a great dichotomy in education. Throughout educational psychology and pedagogy, teachers are taught the importance of differentiation. From Gardner to Piaget to Elkind, educational experts have a long history of recognizing differentiated intellects. People learn in different ways, in different time lengths, and we even have different intelligences. Standardized testing and other standardized forms of education fly in the face of everything educators know about the way students learn and express knowledge.
So what’s so great about differentiation? First of all, it allows the educator to assess the actual learning taking place on an individualized level. What’s that? That’s too much work? There are too many students? TEACHING IS NOT FOR THE WEAK! The purpose of teaching is to ensure the learning of each student. Differentiated assessments are often performance-based, which allow you as an educator to evaluate your students based on their capabilities. Performance-based assessments also require students to prove they can actually DO the things they’ve been learning about in class. Most people (especially the savvy students of the new millenium) can BS their way through a standardized test of multiple guess questions. It’s not hard. You’re usually given four options, and two of them are often too ridiculous to even be considered, which narrows your realistic choices down to two. The real world doesn’t take well to that kind of guess work. They want to know you can do what you say you can do. To quote Dr. Ray Stantz from Ghostbusters, “I’ve worked in the private sector; they expect results.”
Is there a place for multiple choice questions? Sure. The problem with standardized testing (which so many legislators believe to be so essential to determining the success of various educational plans they like to implement) is that it relies almost exclusively on multiple choice testing, the talking head of direct instruction, and rote memorization. Suffice to say that legislators with no teaching experience, (not so) shockingly appear to have no clue as to how education takes place, what methods are effective, or what role psychology plays in the learning process.
The purpose of education is to enable student learning. If that is to happen, we need to stop letting people who have no idea how to teach, who haven’t spent a day inside a school room since they were 17, and who refuse to do their own homework, tell us how to teach. We need to know our students, their strengths and weaknesses, their passions and stumbling blocks, and we need to craft our teaching and our assessments to fit their needs. Of course it’s hard work, and no we don’t get paid enough for the amount of hours we work. But really, when was the last time someone trying to decide on their major said, “I’m going to be a teacher; those guys are rollin’ in the Benjamins!” We went into this profession knowing how crappy the pay was. We don’t teach for the money. We teach because we are passionate about helping students learn, and helping them have a significant experience that can enable them to live their dreams later in life. We inspire. We motivate. We can make logic and math the coolest thing since the release of Destiny on PC. We can make grammar more entertaining than a crappy film adaptation of our students’ favorite book. But we can’t do it if we’re focused on creating plain, glaze-free, craptacular, standardized education. One size does NOT fit all.
Is there a place for multiple choice questions? Sure. The problem with standardized testing (which so many legislators believe to be so essential to determining the success of various educational plans they like to implement) is that it relies almost exclusively on multiple choice testing, the talking head of direct instruction, and rote memorization. Suffice to say that legislators with no teaching experience, (not so) shockingly appear to have no clue as to how education takes place, what methods are effective, or what role psychology plays in the learning process.
The purpose of education is to enable student learning. If that is to happen, we need to stop letting people who have no idea how to teach, who haven’t spent a day inside a school room since they were 17, and who refuse to do their own homework, tell us how to teach. We need to know our students, their strengths and weaknesses, their passions and stumbling blocks, and we need to craft our teaching and our assessments to fit their needs. Of course it’s hard work, and no we don’t get paid enough for the amount of hours we work. But really, when was the last time someone trying to decide on their major said, “I’m going to be a teacher; those guys are rollin’ in the Benjamins!” We went into this profession knowing how crappy the pay was. We don’t teach for the money. We teach because we are passionate about helping students learn, and helping them have a significant experience that can enable them to live their dreams later in life. We inspire. We motivate. We can make logic and math the coolest thing since the release of Destiny on PC. We can make grammar more entertaining than a crappy film adaptation of our students’ favorite book. But we can’t do it if we’re focused on creating plain, glaze-free, craptacular, standardized education. One size does NOT fit all.