Hidden Curriculum video - “Performance on a test is indicative of a child’s worth”. This statement could not be more far from the truth especially in today’s society. If you look at the number of white collar crimes, such as subprime mortgages in the United States, Enron, Madoff, and most recently Volkswagen emissions scandal, many of these individuals who worked in such organizations, graduated from prestigious Ivy-league schools with probably the highest SAT scores and GPAs. Yet they showed no remorse for the crimes they committed, destroying the lives of many and in some cases resulting in a complete meltdown of the economy. If so, how can a performance test possibly measure someone’s character?
Having completed my formative years of education in Singapore, I used to think of educators as merely academic providers and that academic excellence was “be all and end all”. That a standardized test is an objective measurement of an individual, differentiating one group from another on any given subject.
However over the years, I have come to realize that academic excellence does not always produce well-rounded individuals who have the ability to handle the challenges in their daily lives and more importantly the ability to differentiate what is considered morally right from wrong.
To focus on a single test taken on a single day does not suggest the learner’s skills, knowledge and attitude. While it may help students like myself be prepared for the test, rote learning has its limitations especially for adult learners. Learners may remember the facts, but they do not fully understand the meaning of it and how it can be applied. Remembering a list of facts is useless if learners do not know how to apply them in solving real-world problems.Standardized tests also limit the student’s overall learning potential growth, especially among adult learners who usually come with a wealth of work and life experiences. According to Malcolm Knowles, adult learners need to know what and why they are learning, and how they can benefit from their learning experiences – professionally and/or personally. In order for adult learners to stay motivated, they need to draw from their previous experiences and apply what they learn immediately into practice. By connecting new ideas with previous ones, they will be able to better understand the “why” and therefore are more likely to embrace new concepts and changes. Adult learners have many other responsibilities, such as being a parent, a spouse and an employee other than just being a student. So if an adult learner performs poorly on a single test due to the pressures from work or home, is that a true indicator of the learner’s performance? Lastly real world problems are far more complex and dynamic, no single performance test can measure students’ knowledge and skills, let alone their character, values and beliefs.
Reference
Bierema, S. B. (2014). Adult Learning - Linking Theory and Practice. San Francisco: Josse-Bass .