Post 8

This week we have been discussing many topics in class about the art of teaching. On Thursday we were discussing tests and their usefulness, especially regarding their reliability. It is my belief that the current climate in education is causing us to over test students, and to do this on trivial things which will be little use to them in the future. Therefore, I thought I would explain why I think this in this blog and what I think this means for society.

In essence, testing is good in moderation and when testing useful aspects. For example, testing peoples knowledge on things which they will use in their day to day life is seriously important. These are tests which are used to make sure people know basic Maths and language skills, sounds mundane and obvious but it is necessary. After this point testing becomes vague, and the knowledge subject to a persons future needs. For example, in a Maths class I learnt how to work out geometric sequences, which has no use to anyone except a theoretical mathematician. I was tested on this and although I could do it I will never use it in my life. Therefore the knowledge is useless to me, and the fact that I know how to do it, or not, is pointless. On the other hand, I learnt how to speak a little Spanish whilst at school as well, and was tested on this. I have many Spanish friends and family in Spain therefore I will use this knowledge a lot throughout my life. Therefore this knowledge and the fact that's I know it is useful to me.

It is impossible to tell what information is important to each person when they grow up and therefore we shouldn't expect everyone to know everything they are tested on. It isn't necessary. Therefore, we need to reduce the amount of testing to useful and necessary knowledge. If a person intends to go into a particular career they should be tested on their knowledge before entering the profession because this is useful and important to know if they have the correct knowledge.

At the moment society is stuck in a continuous test as we constantly assess each other's knowledge and fight for the title of the smartest. Eventually we will not be testing knowledge we will be testing peoples luck and ability to guess or regurgitate. This is not important in day to day life. We have to get out of the testing culture.