The Testing Industry

EDUCATION - TESTING INDUSTRY - LEARNING STYLES: - What is aptitude? Why must people work within a social framework that values following 'norms' of intellect and has questions on tests rather than judgments of soulful and ethical actual behavior? The book 'Emotional Intelligence' makes a good case for EQ rather than IQ. Kaoru Yamamoto of the University of Colorado describes the making, coaching, and taking of tests seem like all our teachers are learning. He correctly identifies the flawed ability to maintain or generate effective learning by turning the process into unwilling students being force fed by uncharismatic automatons without authority. Most teachers know they are little more than 'glorified baby-sitters' and so they don't want to be held accountable. Accountable to tests that value regurgitation is not accountable to real value. They have lots of good arguments on all sides of the issue because the fundamental premises are hugely flawed. Some social scientists make a very good point about the purpose of education in our recent history when they note the Industrial Revolution sought workers to punch time clocks and follow the bosses and their minion's orders. The homogenization of memorization being the key to learning assumes something worse than what isn't in evidence. It is not evident that linear logical processes or competency in memory skills is paramount to the functioning character development of productive people. In fact we have ample reason to limit these skills now that hand held or wristwatch sized data bases are able to connect to near total knowledge networks. Forgetting that important point, we must understand what education and teaching really is supposed to achieve. Simple common sense alone would indicate a high priority should exist in the augmentation of interest in learning and the joys it may offer a person throughout their life. Co-operative and social integrational skills teaching are well enough developed in the science of education and should be given more support. In Canada the word