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