ANTI-TESTING Here’s another anti-high-stakes-testing
ANTI-TESTING Here’s another anti-high-stakes-testing (a new world’s record for hyphens in one sentence) article. What piqued my interest, however, is this quote:
Based on [Prof. Weinstein’s] studies of elementary school students, “children as young as 6 know where they stand academically, especially in classroom settings that make such so-called achievement differences very obvious,” she says, “and this means they are vulnerable to not believing in themselves from an early age.
This strikes me as another good reason to homeschool. I have nothing against competition. In the business world, competition lowers prices and increases quality and choices for the consumer. In athletics, competition often provides the motivation to excel. BUT, do 6-year-olds really need to be comparing themselves on some “smartness” scale to the rest of their classmates? They’re so little and their egos are so fragile that, to me, it seems the competitive nature of schools is counter-productive. Better to keep them home and teach them at a pace where they can learn without feeling “dumb”. After all, in my “school” every kid is a valedictorian. (Hey, maybe a new bumper sticker idea.)