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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by John Boleyn
I understand why Gov. James Gilmore has instituted Standards of Learning tests for students in Virginia. In an era of ever declining academic performance, there is the need to see their performance levels increased. And as the chief executive of the commonwealth, he has the responsibility to ensure that this problem is addressed. But what if the problem is much larger than the solution of the SOLs? Does our education establishment know how the skills of learning are developed in the first place? Obviously, this is not a problem which can be solved entirely by Gov. Gilmore or by any Governor whether they are a Democrat or Republican. Can the Standards of Learning tests and the preparation for these tests empower our kids to learn? The way in which we test or examine students and the way in which we grade them determines what teachers teach and how they teach and what students learn and how they learn. Unfortunately, most teachers and administrators do is complain about the SOL process and create clever catch phrases such "All the SOLs do is cause us to teach to the test." Yes, there is some truth to this and as it could apply to the concept of teaching and testing in both public and private schools in general. But teachers and educators are going to have to do a lot better than this. In Prince William County, administrators plan to attempt to by-pass their end of year finals achieving significant result on their SOLs. County School Superintendent Dr. Edward Kelly believes that SOL tests should not be the prime measure of a school's quality. He has instituted several countywide standards for assessing schools, including attendance, scores on other standardized tests and parent satisfaction. The Washington Post has quoted Dr. Kelly as saying, "Realistically, if we don't get enough youngsters passing the SOLs, the diploma isn't going to mean much anyway." But do these SOLs bring real value to a high school diploma? And just what should be the approach to learning in any school system? Schooling must be general with very little specialization; liberal, and not vocational. It must be dedicated to the total human being, not just to training in specialized techniques. General learning should be the possession of every person. Right now our approach in both public and private schools is pretty much to indoctrinate students with information and have them memorize it. Then they pass it back to their teachers as learning rather than a process of genuine learning by acts of thinking and understanding that involve discovery by the minds of students. If the information students get is not understood, then it's opinion, not knowledge. Opinions adopted on the naked authority of teachers have no durability, and with memories temporarily reinforced for tests, these opinions are for the most part forgotten. Much more durable are the habits of skill, which are formed by the kind of teaching which is coaching, which is more cooperative than lecturing. Habits are not memories. Most students passing, at the end of one academic year, the standardized tests of final exams or the current SOLs (which are largely tests based on memorization) would be hard-pressed to pass the very same tests given without warning at beginning of next school year. But if the habitually possessed skills of students in reading and writing were measured by the level of their performance at the end of one and measured in the same way at a later time, I think little would be lost. The understanding of ideas and knowledge once acquired has maximum durability in our lives because it is habit of the intellect, not something solely remembered.
Mr. Boleyn is a journalist and writer in philosophy, ethics and education.
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