Wrong Jungle

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”— Albert Einstein

Listening to the latest debate about bringing back and reintroducing standardized testing in Newfoundland and Labrador reminds me of a passage from Stephen Covey's The 8th Habit:

A group of people are working their way through a jungle, cutting through the undergrowth with machetes. Everyone is busy. The producers are working, the managers are sharpening the machetes, creating procedures, schedules and training programs.

Then the leader climbs the tallest tree, looks around, and shouts:

“We are in the wrong jungle!”

The response from below?

“Shut up! We’re making progress.”

We are doing the same thing in education.

We keep looking for ways to measure an increasingly archaic system, rather than asking whether the system itself still reflects what children need to learn and how they actually learn. Maybe the question isn't, “How do we test more effectively?” Maybe it's, “Are we measuring the right things in the first place?” Children need resources, strategies, support. Children need rich, authentic learning opportunities that develop curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication and the ability to apply what they know, not simply more sophisticated ways of measuring an old model. 

Refurbishing a VCR won't help it play a movie that's on Netflix.

Barry Smith