Reply #30: I don't even understand multiple-choice testing [View All]

[XemaSab]

I'd rather have a middle school student who is able to talk about the causes and aftermath of the Civil War in general terms than be able to say what date something happened or where something happened or which generals were fighting in a particular battle.

Being able to talk about the causes and aftermath demands interdisciplinary thinking (literature, farming, economics, geography, European history, African-American history, industrial history, history of settlement patterns, and history of colonialism, among others) while a literal approach is just memorization of facts in isolation from one another. I'm not saying that facts and details aren't important, I'm saying that they need to be in context, and that the context is more important than the details.

Unfortunately, context cannot be measured by filling in a bubble.

(If I was the dictator, there would be very few facts and no standardized tests under 4th grade. Reading, basic math, telling time, some vocabulary and spelling, some grammar and punctuation would be pretty much it, plus art, creative writing, sports, music, nature studies, and so forth.)