Tag Archives: talents

Apr22

The Danger of Test Scores

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Is This Wise?

Is This Wise?There is a great fable about an imagined animal school which decides to adopt the design structure of schools for humans.  Humans have greater thinking and learning power than animals, right?  Someone erroneously believes they can improve the performance of ALL animals by modeling animal schools after a learning institution for people.  But is this wise?

In this new animal school, rather than the teacher being satisfied with the beaver’s ability to chop down trees and build dams, the teacher also insists the beaver learn to fly.  The results of the beaver’s efforts to fly are, of course, frustrating and even ludicrous. Facing such a failure the beaver is no longer even proud of his innate ability to build dams better than any other animal.

What Are We Doing?

Take a discerning look at our schools.  Isn’t that too close to what we really do?  Instead of identifying and capitalizing on a student’s intrinsic talents, we reduce the time he spends in a pursuit in which he excels and simultaneously increase the amount of time he spends being tutored in a skill for which he has minimal talent.  Think for a moment about this.

In a culture in which we are being driven by only test scores, we remove a student from his favorite class to tutor him/her for a class in which s/he is failing.  Did it work for the beaver?  What a scary philosophy this becomes when you consider the implications not just for individuals, but also for our country.

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Why do we put all our efforts into forcing students to remediate to obtain mere passing scores in a subject area in which they are weak?  Why not use those same efforts to encourage and push them in an area of their brilliance?  What our country really needs is people functioning at the top of their form in the areas in which they excel.  Ignite the flame in the area of their strengths and watch them catapult forward.  If and when we finally do that, our entire nation will benefit.

Great teachers know this.  They search and search until they discover and reveal a student’s talent.  They frequently are the first to reveal that talent to the student.  They give voice to it, encourage it and often push the student to heights they didn’t believe they could ever achieve.

I’m not the national Secretary of Education, but I think one of the things we need to be doing in every school district in America, is identifying individual student’s areas of brilliance and finding ways to encourage, enhance and grow that talent.  Flying beavers are not the answer.

Want to help stop test score obsession?  Please share this blog post with someone.

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May8

A Kick in the Pants

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Sharing Talents

I have a lovely friend named Candy, who I met in college at Miami University too many decades ago.  I always admired her and wanted to get a little closer, but I did something really stupid.  I got too busy with life and didn’t pursue a friendship my instincts told me would be valuable.  I’m sure none of you are stupid enough to have ever done this.  But I can be short-sighted like that.

Don’t let the picture scare you.  Candy, fortunately didn’t die.  I’ll tell you about the tombstone in a minute. When I retired from teaching last year I finally had my second chance to reconnect with Candy.  I got just a little bit smarter and I did it.  I found an email address in an old Christmas letter and I contacted her.  We have been exchanging enjoyable emails for over a year and catching up on our lives.  What a lovely gift I gave myself at this point in my life.

Discovering Treasures

One of the wonderful talents I rediscovered in Candy was her writing.  She is simply a beautiful writer.  I’ve complimented her on her writing style frequently and encouraged her to share her talent with others.  Candy was an only child and confided that she really wanted to write stories about her parents.  They are both gone now and she realized if she didn’t write about them, who would ever know them once she was gone?  Memories of them would be lost to the world.  But this wonderful friend is something of a perfectionist.  She is her own worst critic.  Too many of us do that to ourselves.  Don’t we?  If these stories couldn’t be absolutely perfect, she told herself, “Why begin?”

That is when her annoying friend, (yep,me) after reading one more delightful email from Candy complimented her one more time on her writing and then posed this tactless question.  “Do you really want to take this talent to the cemetery with you without sharing it with anyone?”  See tombstone above.  Oh, I can be such a thoughtless and undiplomatic nag when I spot a buried treasure.   It’s that somewhat ‘tact free’ approach to kicking people in the pants that made me a good teacher.  

Guess what?  I don’t remember using that sentence on her.  But she just sent it back to me yesterday.  It was pretty embarrassing to realize how I had worded that challenge.  But I forgive myself, because she has started to write wonderful stories about her parents.  It worked.  Her parents are reborn as she makes them come alive in her writings. 

So now, I’m asking you.  “What talent do YOU have that you are saving for the cemetery? Is that really the best use of your talents?”  Of course, none of us plan to take our talents to the grave.  Would it take a terminal diagnosis to get you going?  What are you gonna’ do about sharing those talents today?  I’m here to nag you just a little bit about it. 

This week in addition to my blogs, I’ve written two pieces I’ve submitted for a writer’s contest and a publication.  I might not win.  They might not print my work.  Rejection isn’t fun.  In fact, rejection stings.  But picturing that cemetery keeps me trying. What about you?