Well, the topic for the week is types of intelligence and if they should be assessed regularly in school-aged children. Right now mostly 2 out of the 9 types of intelligence are tested for using standardized testing. There are nine types of intelligence according to Howard Gardner and the two we test for in the USA are Logical-Mathematical intelligence and Linguistic intelligence. I have an aunt and uncle who live in Canada, specifically Ontario, and I looked into what kind of standardized testing they do there. It seems to me that a standardized test in Canada is used more as an assessment tool for the schools than for the students. It also seems that not too many provinces agree with each other about the method in which these tests should be given.
Standardized testing is an interesting topic for me because I guess I do not really know how I feel about it. I dislike more than I like I guess but really I think the practices are not going to be easily changed. Our whole school system values the two types of intelligence I mentioned earlier but as I was looking into other kinds of intelligence, it seems that emotional intelligence in adults may be more important for functioning successfully in society. Why then do we not have some kind of test for that or even some sort of standardized class or curriculum to help teach it? I know many teachers and they are really teaching strategies to help their students do well on the standardized tests. Seriously? That is how we teach kids? We spend a majority of the year teaching them strategies to succeed on a test?
I wish I had some brilliant solution to this issue, but unfortunately I do not. I will say however that I do believe there should be some way to track a student's progress during school so that they do not get lost and if they are having a hard time and falling behind, they could get the help they need. It doesn't seem that standardized testing does what it is supposed to do but I think we may be worse off without it than we are with it.
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