The Evil of Evaluation in Education -- The Student as a Person

    

You have a bright, active child. They're interested. The world is new and fascinating for them, every day. They get up each morning assuming that life will be an adventure. So it should be.

Then they go to school.

For many students, the adventure turns into grim punishment. They find themselves COMPARED. They're "slow in math". They're "remedial" in science or reading. They're "behind their grade level". They're too tall, too friendly, they're religious. They're "hyperactive". In short, the student is "different-bad", of far less value, they and their parents are informed, than was believed. With "authority", the teacher and principle and school psychologist state that your child "needs help", in the form of additional organizational controls over the student's life...more time cracking the books, more homework, "special" classes, counseling, Ritalin. The student is not special, he is a "problem". The world is not fascinating, it's threatening. A life of self-doubt and even drug addiction (prescribed and sanctioned) has begun. (And, not to be too dramatic, but has there been a shooting in a school in the last ten years committed by a student who was not undergoing psychiatric "care", most or all of them drugged? Doesn't seem so.)

Being energetic, bright, having interests is not a detriment, except to overwhelmed teachers with thirty students every hour, and inundated schools trying to service hundreds or thousands of parents and students. The extraordinary student (every student) requires time and attention. Students with unique life interests and vitality are not the "public" targeted by most modern educational systems. Institutions handle numbers, not individuals. Their methods and curricula are designed to service the average, or to keep all students at the level of the lowest common denominator, so "no child is left behind".

Only every student is an individual. Every student, without exception, has unique skills, ideas and needs which should be addressed and satisfied by their education. Every student works best at his or her unique pace, studying in a way that challenges them to think and grow and evaluate for themselves as individuals. This is one of the thrusts behind the meteoric growth of home schooling worldwide.

The parent sees their child, and knows. Here is a unique and deserving individual to be valued, not "made to fit in", and not controlled!

A rational look at education pinpoints the need for the student to receive information which the student is then allowed to evaluate. What is the value of this information to the student? How can he or she use that information? This sort of educational approach is impossible in a classroom, where individual brightness and creativity must be crushed in favor of the overall "progress" of the group. Students in the classroom who don't quite fit, who are too fast or slow or different, must be squeezed into the pace and shape of their fellow "numbers". That's how schools survive, and students fail.

     Steven Horwich
     Connect The Thoughts