LD Blog

Over on Pomoyemu, Silvia ran this quotation by Carl Rogers:

I believe that the testing of the student’s achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning. –Carl Rogers

Of course, I couldn’t hold still for it, so I posted a reply there. I’m reproducing that reply here.

I gotta disagree with the sentiment of the venerable Mr. (teehee) Rogers, Silvia.

If educators (including parents) consider something important enough that we plan to teach it, then we ought to want to know whether we have been successful and our students have learned that something. About the only way to ascertain whether something has been learned is to test it. A test does not have to be a pencil-and-paper assessment, of course; the test can be a demonstration of competence.

Consider crossing the street. I see crossing the street as a pretty important competency for young children. I’d even contend that it should be actively and explicitly taught. And, I’d want to know if my students faithfully executed the steps in street-crossing, so I’d test their competence. Obviously, the most appropriate tests would be administered in real-world environments, not by paper quiz, with careful oversight and under various conditions (quiet country roads; city streets; high-speed highways; etc.).

The same thinking applies to decoding in reading, solving for missing multiplicands, reporting the argument of an author, proving a geometrical relationship, and so on.

Essentially, if something’s is worth teaching, it’s worth testing.

By the way, I think the reverse is true, too. If something is important enough to test, then we ought to teach it.