Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Education

The readings in my composition class for today have me thinking and rethinking the overall goals of education in our country. HUGE topic. Lots of tracks to follow on this line. When I was growing up and going to school, there were no learning styles surveys.  We all took the IQ tests--I never knew the outcome of mine, although I must assume I "passed"! When I got into my senior year in high school, they started tracking students--the smart kids were placed in classes together and the not-so-smart had their own classes. I wonder what the long term affect of this kind of tracking has been. I'm reading a book right now called The Social Animal by David Brooks, and in it, he discusses the mistakes made by assuming that IQ can tell all educators need to know about a person's ability to learn. The quantification of abilities seems so neat, doesn't it? If only a number could tell it all.  But I think we all suspect that there is much more to the picture. It would be nice if everyone could just be assigned a number and given a spot to fill, and then we could all go about our business, right? Life is not neat, however, and potential cannot be measured. Perceptions form over long periods of time and they shift like waves in the wind. Better to allow people to explore as they learn, rather then pigeon-holing them before they even have a chance to know themselves....

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