Standardized testing creates standard students

Ernest Owens, originally from Chicago, Illinois, is a Communication & Public Service major at the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as a columnist for the Daily Pennsylvanian, broadcasts his hit radio show “Ernestly Speaking!” on WQHS.org, and is an elected student government representative at UPenn.

Written by Ernest Owens

“There was a time when kids used to go outside and actually pick up bugs,” my mother said to me when I was in high school. “We used to have museum field trips and have volcano projects…I guess you guys don’t have time for that anymore.”

And she was right. What caused such a dichotomy from the 1980s school classroom and that of today? What dismissed the bug picking and museum field trips? Standardized testing? Bingo.

Standardized testing, for all of its proposed grandeur, has failed to succeed in its primary purpose and it will fail in the educational enrichment of American public schools.

Firstly, the purpose for standardized testing is simple: to facilitate the absorption of the basic educational requirements in order to ensure that every student graduates with common knowledge. And that mission is plausible. However, out of the host of problems that standardized testing brings to the table, I want to talk about one in particular: Where is the creativity that once existed in education, and when will teachers have the freedom to nurture skills like creativity, critical thinking and collaboration?

Growing up primarily in the Houston public school system, I remember seeing my teacher follow TEKS, the set of daily applications teachers had to incorporate in their lessons for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test. These applications were restrictive and did not allow her to be the best educator she could be. When someone in the class asked one day if our class could go to the NASA Space Center to see the new Mars exhibition, we were all given an unfortunate rejection. “It doesn’t fit the curriculum,” she replied sadly. Instead, we sat bored and agitated watching a quick 30 minute Magic School Bus episode and that was the end of our discussion on space.

For most of my pre-college experience, I resented many of my teachers for being so restricting in how they taught. I remember growing up and reading the Roald Dahl novel “Matilda” and wanting my teachers to be just like Miss Honey. But instead they were Miss Trunchbulls when it came to keeping us cooped away in classrooms with hardly any exploration.

It wasn’t until my 8th grade year when I heard my history teacher slip out a profanity before we left class. Being the brat that I was during the time, I had to call him out on it. But then I realized that he was frustrated with the system in general and I sat astonished.

“I didn’t graduate from college to do this,” he spat. “I want to teach kids, not dictate them for a paycheck.”

I didn’t understand what he actually meant then, but today it makes so much sense. As a student mentor for Community School Student Partnerships (CSSP) in Philadelphia, I continue to see the disparity that takes place in the lives of youth in public education. The lack of exposure they get to have growing up in a time in their lives when it is very necessary. The reduced experiences that they won’t be able to encounter, simply because it isn’t in the curriculum, are vast.

And that is the problem with standardized testing, the fact that education has now become a manufactured process rather than a loving enrichment. Yes, students might be able to complete basic math and science problems on paper, but they will also become small robots regurgitating facts and lacking the motivation and concern to apply them to the real world.

Standardized testing eliminates creativity on both the student’s part and the teacher’s. Students are only able to express their efforts based on the much reduced expectations given to them, while teachers are forced to put aside the very superb skills they were hired for in the first place. While the government dictates the public school system, they fail to acknowledge the actual direct people involved. There has to be a better way.

Why is this important? Because if we encourage our youth to go to college, they have to start getting ready today. Life is not a multiple choice booklet that requires one answer only with a No. 2 pencil. Life is open-ended, filled with versatility and intrigue. Standardized testing does not give students this reality and thus makes the curriculum ineffective. I base this rationale on the following mantra: you can teach someone the facts, but if they can’t apply them, it’s useless. Let’s not standardize the future of the world but allow them to be as curious and open-minded as the society we want them to thrive in.

Please leave some thoughts in the comment box below! Help us get some conversation going on this important issue. You can also tweet at the author at @MrErnestOwens and at One World Youth Project at @owyp.

More of Ernest Owens addressing the hot issue of standardized testing:

A Space for Global Relationships

Guest Post by OWYP Thought Leadership Fellow, Vivian Ojo

One afternoon, four months into the academic year, I returned from class to find my roommate in a frantic state. She was concerned that because our two countries were engaged in active war, our friendship was now in jeopardy. She did not want “politics to come between us”. The gesture came from a good place, however, I am not from Libya, I am in fact from Namibia. “But it is all the same thing isn’t it, one country with different states, just like here?” I smiled at the 20-year-old in awe and proceeded to give her a detailed geography lesson from which she learned that Egypt was in Africa while Haiti was not. Four months into our relationship, she wanted to know about where I was from because she already knew who I was. It was not the other way around. Today my roommate is one of my closest friends and I have since learnt so much from her, but that incident left me concerned about the undercurrent of a greater global issue that I believe we must begin to address.

I joined OWYP in December 2011 with this very mission of global paradigm shifting. The OWYP mission of globalizing education in the global world is a simple concept. The premise is this; the world we live in is changing. We are becoming more technologically, economically and scientifically integrated with one another, so we must equip ourselves with the capacity to culturally integrate. I do not conclude that not many people know that Africa is a continent of many independent nations, but with the low level of global empathy and understanding of others in many areas, this may as well be the case.

Since Woodrow Wilson’s ‘jaw jaw jaw’ analogy in 1945, the trend has leaned toward talking about global issues using intense spurts of dialogues in the form of summits and conferences. However, if we do not know who we are talking to and see the commonalities between us then we talk in vain. It is not enough to just care about the issues we are trying to solve. Be it global hunger, global warming or even global dialogue, we must care about the characters with whom we are dealing with in problem solving in order to come up with sustainable and effective solutions.

From pioneer armchair anthropologists like Lewis Henry Morgan to contemporary outlooks on inter-cultural relations, it is clear to see that there has been progress. We no longer just read books about pristine “tribes” afar. Instead we leave the comforts of our cultures to explore others. The world has done a relatively good job of creating a type of global museum in which we can do tours and cruises and complete the check list of things to see in different countries, ranging from Eiffel tower to the Gaza pyramids. This is not enough. While this curiosity has its merits, without applying and even adopting the lessons of others to our own nations and communities, we may as well go to Vegas to complete the checklist in one location at a lower cost. Even if we know who we are as individual actors in our world, we must also understand who we are as a global cast, an ensemble.

I have few recollections about elementary school. I remember Mrs Hill’s bright yellow flowery dress that she seemed to wear daily, always accompanied by a big smile. I often wondered if she had many of the same dress stashed in her wardrobe. I do not remember much about Pythagoras’ theorem or even the songs we learnt to memorize the different countries in the world. What I do remember is my friend from Iran who was Baha’i. I don’t recall very much of my 6th grade syllabus but today if you asked me, I could tell you quite a bit about what it was like for a Baha’i girl in a Catholic school in Namibia. School is a fantastic place to learn about others. Not simply because the environment is centered around learning but also because as a student, your prejudices have not yet been fully fortified by society’s historical experiences. You like those who are nice to you, you eat that which taste good and you spend time with those you have fun with. If differences are inherent then finding similarities in spite of them is learned and we cannot allow the next generation to be unqualified in the valuable field.

Movements like OWYP are trying to shift basic anthropological rhetoric from questions like “how different are we?” to questions like “how similar are our differences and how can we contribute to our similar goals?” The basic answer in my opinion is relationships. All seven billion of us cannot be friends but we can each build well informed and empathetic relationship with the people we interact with and especially those who we learn with. Relationships are the most powerful resources we have to change our world. I will not forget Mrs Hill’s bright dress and matching smile, my friend from sixth grade and my roommate. Because I identified with their stories, I am inclined to consider the impact of my actions on the next Baha’i sixth grader in Namibia, or the next college student whose world map is distorted. I have been lucky to go to school in quite a few different countries where I could identify these stories and build these relationships. If we can create a space where these relationships can be created without the financial and even environmental cost of constant travel, then we have created a space for relationships that can change the trajectory of cultural relationships.

Cell Yourselves

Guest Post by OWYP Board Member, Karim Ajania

In a post 9/11 world the word “cell” has come to have a negative and ominous connotation; it often implies terrorist or criminal sleeper cells and are poised for activation and destructive activity.

Precisely 30 years before 9/11 in 9/81, I was a college student and I ran a cell. And I even wrote an article about it entitled “Cell Yourselves”.

The University of San Francisco where I went to college had a large and diverse international student population. However, studies had shown that foreign students tend to congregate amongst themselves once they arrived at a university in the US for all the predictable reasons – they were homesick, they needed to speak a language that was familiar, they had common friends and family back home.

So USF came up with a wonderful concept called “cells”.

These cells were clusters of 8 to 10 students plus a cell leader.

The student clusters were diverse and only one person from a representative country was permitted to join the cell. And for the entire first week of college these cells engaged in common activities: sports, putting on small theatrical skits, doing community service and so on. I was a cell leader and it was just a delight to see the “paradigm shift” of cultures that were unfamiliar with each other to commune and clash and create a new sense of community. It was not always easy but it was worthwhile because by the end of that week each student had found about 7 or 8 or 9 new friends to launch into their college career with. Friends from far flung countries whom they may never have befriended otherwise – or even noticed.

There was also the impact of the USF Jesuit tradition of community service – a tradition that extends to other Jesuit colleges such as Georgetown, which Jess Rimington attended.

These foreign students got to serve food to homeless Americans, serve people in hospices, comfort runaway children in shelters in the San Francisco city areas and to witness Americans who lived in real pain and had real challenges.

And taken as a whole these multiple cells reconfigured into a more vibrant living and breathing student body where the life cells were stronger, healthier and more integrated. There was so much more warmth – both intra-cell and inter-cell – it was like ice cubes melting together. The former boundaries and walls had been dismantled and cultural stereotypes had begun to evaporate.

My concern after this cell-building week was for the value of cell integration to remain intact and to not disintegrate. And so in that same September month that school had just started, I wrote an article to encourage the student body to make the vision of cell-building a sustainable activity that travels far beyond that first introductory week of school.

Below is that article reprinted from over 30 years ago in the USF Foghorn.

Meeting Erik Visser

How I came by the article is a story in itself. A couple of months ago I went into Peet’s Coffee in my neighborhood and bumped into a guy I had not see for over 30 years – a Dutchman by the name Erik Visser. Erik and I shared a dorm at USF in 1980 and had not seen each other since then!!

We had… coffee. And have met regularly for coffee since then, catching up on the years – we both have college-aged kids – his son Brian and my daughter Davina are both USF college students today!

As fellow parents Erik and I have often discussed the need for our kids to embrace a multi-cultural and global world. And in that context I mentioned the long-lost article I wrote as an Editor of the USF Foghorn all those years ago…

I told Erik I had no idea how to find the article “Cell Yourselves” and so he contacted his friend Father Kotlanger at the Foghorn Archives. And that is how I managed to get my hands on this article after over 30 years.

Erik then read the article and shared the ideas with his son Brian and then Erik and Brian met with me at… Peet’s Coffee – the very same Peet’s where Erik and I bumped into each other!

I decided to interview Erik about his take on “Cell Yourselves”:

Karim:

Erik, this is just like being back at USF – you were on the soccer team back then and now your son Brian is on the soccer team. And you run the soccer program! And here I am interviewing you just like I used to back when I was on the USF Foghorn editorial team!

Erik:

It’s surreal! It feels like we are just picking up where we left off after over 30 years.

Karim:

What were your thoughts after you read my article “Cell Yourselves”?

Erik:

Well first of all… my apologies for not getting to it sooner…

Karim

.. That’s okay Erik – people often wait over 30 years before they finally get to read one of my articles…

Erik:

I was fascinated by that idea of the cells being clusters of diverse cultures of 7 or 8 or 9 college students. And I was thinking that you know – that is exactly what I do today: I manage a cell of 32 students – from all social and cultural backgrounds. There are Hispanic students from very low-income sections of the state, there are Australians, Norwegians, you name it. And I have been doing this for 30 years now so I have managed cells with students from many, many countries.

Karim:

You remember all the Nigerian and Ghanaian soccer players we had back then Erik? Well I was talking to my friend Emmanuel who is from Ghana and is a student at Johns Hopkins and loves soccer. And one of the things we both felt is that soccer is such a “democratic” game – anyone anywhere can play it.

Erik:

It is the most democratic game because you can be in the poorest part of Ghana or Kenya or Brazil and you can either buy a ball or make a ball…

But the main point of your article Karim, which is relevant today is that we all must learn to get along no matter what part of the world we are from. In a global world we need cultural understanding to build moral and productivity.

I see this all the time in my business – the sports management business. You need to be able to navigate your way through all the cultural divides and find a way to build bridges between cultures – that is the only way to build moral and thereby implement productive and fruitful team work.

As people who love good writing – as you and I do – I am a little disappointed in the prevalence of low quality journalism today. But as you know – since we have a cup of coffee now and then in the morning – I always read the New York Times and he one guy I will always read and respect as a journalist is Tom Friedman – I read all his articles and I have read all his books.

The point that Friedman makes over and over, is the point you make in Cell Yourselves about the USF policy to integrate students – it must all begin at the Educational level. Education is key. I have a couple of masters degrees and have always strived to improve and learn by taking college classes from the time you and I were in our 20’s to well into my 30’s and my 40’s.

And the key attribute of the “cells” is that it is a community effort. That is what my own “cell building” is – a community effort involving students, faculty and parents to make sure we not only win soccer matches but that we keep the grade point average up.

Education is the key to the global world as Friedman said in a recent article [Pass the Books: Hold the Oil – New York Times, March 10]:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/friedman-pass-the-books-hold-the-oil.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman

Add it all up and the numbers say that if you really want to know how a country is going to do in the 21st century, don’t count its oil reserves or gold mines, count its highly effective teachers, involved parents and committed students. “Today’s learning outcomes at school,” says Schleicher, “are a powerful predictor for the wealth and social outcomes that countries will reap in the long run.”

Karim:

… Are you saying you can actually make a soccer ball?

Erik:

I have seen people make soccer balls out of all sorts of eco-friendly available materials. There are places in Africa where kids make balls out of plastic bags like in this video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0GQZFlO4tM] and there are kids in Hondurus who make balls out of used clothes and old rags like in this video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQMhvujnpAo&feature=fvwrel]

Brian (Erik’s son):

Dad – tell Karim about One World Futbal Project!

Erik:

Ya okay – now this is something very special indeed! One World Futbal Project [http://www.oneworldfutbol.com] was actually inspired by Darfur refugees. And I actually have one of these balls at home – it is the most durable ball in the world – doesn’t need a pump – it can outlast any regular ball. And it can make a difference in the lives of kids in places where they cannot afford a soccer ball. One World Futbal Project is an amazing concept.

Karim:

Recommending the One World Futbal Project concept to the One World Youth Project! Now that seems like a perfect way to pause this interview.

Thank you Brian and Erik.

And Erik, I look forward to our follow-up interview 30 years from now.