As educators it is important that we know what children understand and what they are ready to learn. In my community the school district’s answer to finding this information is through standardizes testing of children. I see how the school has lost sight of the individuality of the child and are looking only at how the child fits within their criteria of learning. When we do not take into account the multiple intelligences theory for children, we are doing them a disservice (Woolfolk, 2007). In a classroom, one child might be accomplished in linguistics while a classmate is more accomplished in interpersonal skills. There is not a cookie cutter design or template that all children, or adults, fit into and when assessments occur in relationship to only the individual
child, I believe our school systems will be better.

In Texas, children as young as third grade are given written standardized assessment test. I often wonder about the children that are not good test takers’. Maybe they are better at showin (tactile-kinesthetic) what they know or better at verbally explaining (auditory) what they understand instead of being able to mark the correct bubble on a test exam. I am an auditory learner and for me I have to “talk” my way through the PPST and Teacher Exit Exams back in the 1980s. It makes it easier for me to be able to know the correct answer if I am able to silently listen to it in my head. A third grader is not able to do this exercise due to his developmental age; therefore as an educational society we owe him the chance to shows us what he knows on his own terms. In a movement to try and keep up with other countries education we have forgotten about the child, and only looked at the end result. The process of learning has left many classrooms because the
individual child’s needs are not being addressed.

Often times I hear that it is important that we have these assessment test so we can be close to the Japan’s education system. I agree that Japan’s junior high, high school and college students have a more stressed need to do well on assessment test because their future literally rides on the test score. The biggest difference is that Japan’s elementary schools are focused in a very different way. Japanese children in the first four years of school focus more on music, fine arts and physical education with some of their week dedicated to social studies, mathematics, science, music , handicrafts, and homemaking (Education in Japan, 2007). From the child’s 5th year in school, they start to push more knowledge of current events, advanced math and readingand writing. I understand that Japan’s education system is hard and that they have much more advanced testing after the sixth grade; however I believe the ability for children in the early elementary years to not have this stress is a very important aspect of their learning abilities later on (Facts and Details, 2011).

I worry about the stress that is put on young children in our society to do well on assessment test. I believe a place to start is to educate parents regarding the individuality of children. I see parents who compare not only their child to a classmate, but parents who compare siblings. We must all start to realize that everyone is different, with their unique strengths and weaknesses, and that we need to start working toward fitting into their world instead of making them fit into our cookie cutter plan.

References

Education in Japan (2007). The National School Curriculum. Retrieved on December 4,2011 from http://www.education-in-japan.info/sub1.html#sub1r3

 

Facts and Details (2011). Schools in Japan: Pre-Schools, Elementary Schools, High Schools, Kanji and Juku. Retrieved on December 4, 2011 from

 http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=832&catid=23&subcatid=150


Woolfolk, A. (2007). Education Psychology (10th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.