How the Obsession with Test Scores Helps Produce Children Who Lack Creativity and Empathy

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/books/how-obsession-test-scores-helps-produce-children-who-lack-creativity-and-empathy

Excerpted fromThe Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America by Lani Guinier (Beacon Press, 2015). Reprinted with permission from Beacon Press.

Carol Dweck’s numerous studies show that an individual who believes intelligence is “fixed” is much more likely to fail in the face of new challenges, while an individual who believes that intelligence can grow with hard work is much more likely to excel in the face of new challenges.

Dweck first investigated the underpinnings of human motivation as a graduate student at Yale University in the 1960s. She had read about “learned helplessness” in animals. Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania showed that after repeated failures to stop something negative from happening, most animals conclude that the situation is hopeless and beyond their control. After such an experience, the animal often remains passive even when it can effect change, a state the researchers called “learned helplessness.”

After reading these studies, Dweck observed that some people also exhibited “helplessness” in the face of repeated failure. But she was more fascinated by the people who don’t—the people who still persevere in the face of setbacks. She wondered: “Why do some students give up when they encounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn?” After more than three decades of conducting countless studies, she concludes that “one answer . . . [lies] in people’s beliefs about why they had failed.” In short, students who attribute poor performance to a lack of innate ability will continue to perform poorly. However, students with the same incoming abilities who believe their poor performance is due to effort—and thus can be overcome with hard work—will improve their performance over time. Dweck has developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes of learners: helpless versus mastery oriented. Through her research, she found that students not only diverge in how they explain their failures but that they also hold different “theories” of intelligence. Some subscribe to a “fi xed mind-set” of intelligence, others to a “growth mind-set.”

[Roland99]

1. Explains conservatives vs. liberals

[tenderfoot]

2. And here at DU, some think music and art is a waste of time

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6075751

[daleanime]

3. That is very depressing....

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

8. Jury results.

On Wed Jan 14, 2015, 09:05 AM an alert was sent on the following post:

And here at DU, some think music and art is a waste of time
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6083687

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

An off-topic call-out of a member who she has been stalking and harassing. She basically calls the member a troll in the linked thread. Admin sees fit to have, what she calls a troll, on MIRT though. Harassing DUers is about all this member ever does.

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Wed Jan 14, 2015, 09:14 AM, and the Jury voted 2-5 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I agree with tenderfoot. Lots of trolling comments from that poster. I don't give 2 fucks what their position is on the website. As many jurors like to say when giving much more offensive shit a pass. "It's the person's opinion. Debate the merits right there in the thread."
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: yawn
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Sounds like the person who alerted has an issue with this DUer. I don't see "stalking and harassing."
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: I think the referenced poster has already been taken to the whippin' shed enough.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

[tenderfoot]

9. I just sent an email to the administrators about that serial bully

Hopefully, something will become of it.

[CreekDog]

11. the author of the alert is making a pretty bold accusation without evidence

that the other poster is "stalking and harassing".

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

12. Hey! Are you stalking me??!! See how easy that is? :-p

[CreekDog]

13. Well it was harder for you actually

unlike the alerter, you didn't cloak the accusation in anonymity!

[DFW]

4. Not just in America

My elder daughter never did well at her high school in Germany, graduated with a GPA of 2.9 on a scale of 6 (1 being best). She was always creative, loved art and creativity. She always got bad grades in math--not because she couldn't solve the problems assigned, but because she didn't always solve them exactly as the teacher demanded. The German "Abitur" system is designed to smash down and demoralize those who can't or won't conform. She was determined never to continue with the German system, and insisted on going to college in the USA, despite the language issue, which she did. Toward the end of her senior year, she called me up and asked what a "valedictorian" was and why it meant she had to give a speech in English at her graduation (she was a little shy).

In Germany, there is the "numerus clausus," which means that your shot at a place in a university studying in your chosen field is determined SOLELY by your high school Abitur GPA, and nothing else (certain cutoff for medicine, certain cutoff for business, etc.). How good or bad you might really be never enters into the equation.

My younger daughter also went to college in the States and wanted to go on to law school here. The only thing law schools look at, it seems, are LSAT scores. Period. Her English is very good, but the LSATs were full of terms she didn't recognize, so her score wasn't top tier, and so all the "top" law schools turned her down although she is smarter than many of her classmates who were accepted into Harvard and Yale. The law school that DID accept her was perfectly adequate, however. Some of the "smart" robots that went to Harvard Law and Yale Law are still looking for work or are just scraping by, where she is now, at 29, the highest paid international attorney in her field/level and the constant target of headhunters for other firms.

Rigidity and slavery to numbers on test scores discourage many creative young people, and undoubtedly squash the spirit of what should have been an army of creative, optimistic students ready to enrich our world instead of resigning them to depressing positions as taxi drivers or clerks at checkout counters. My daughters got lucky. They beat a system that was designed to make them waitresses.

What about the other 95% of bright, creative young people who are not so lucky? It's a depressing thought.

[hunter]

5. Your reply is better than anything I was going to write.

This kind of testing is all about conformity. Non-conformists tend to disrupt established systems, usually by creating a lot of useless friction within organizations. But more important to the actual progress of a society are the non-conformists driving the most disruptive creative innovations.

It's the sloppiness, and I dare say "lack of accountability," of the U.S.A. educational system that allows many innovators to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to innovate.

[DFW]

10. You wouldn't believe the tears we had to contend with

For an essay in English, which she knew better than the teacher, my elder daughter wrote a research paper on "Eubonics, or Black English--language or dialect?" Her teacher suggested a few texts in German to work off of, but I got her texts and research books from the States instead. The teacher was pissed, so she gave my daughter the equivalent of a D- on her paper, even correcting real English words and replacing them with made up ones. She was in tears when she got it back. We protested to the state board for English instruction, and they ignored everything in the protest and said "the grade is hereby confirmed." She put many weeks of work into that paper, and I reviewed it twice before she submitted it. It was at that point where she said she wanted never to take another year of school in Germany again.

[Johonny]

6. My girl friend went to school 10 hrs a day 6 days a week in China

She can't ride a bike, paint, draw, play a musical instrument, swim...

My brother's kids currently have 3 hours a night homework in the same school system I use to have zero growing up. How is it I managed to get a PhD an without their 3 hrs of mindless busy work. When will people that know nothing about education stop trying to fix the educational system?

[chervilant]

7. "When will people that know nothing

about education stop trying to fix the educational system?"

When the corporate megalomaniacs (who've usurped our media, our politics AND our global economy) can no longer view our system of public education as a cash cow, that's when.

[liberal_at_heart]

14. "Growth mind-set." I like that. My autistic son has always been behind in school but I have seen him

make slow, steady improvements over the years and he has developed characteristics that some who do well in school never develop; perseverance, determination, and creativity.