June 14, 2003 - Pop Politics: Arriving in Ethiopia more than 35 years ago, a group of American Peace Corps volunteers confronted a British system of education that was deeply entrenched in the local schools

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Ethiopia: Peace Corps Ethiopia : The Peace Corps in Ethiopia: June 14, 2003 - Pop Politics: Arriving in Ethiopia more than 35 years ago, a group of American Peace Corps volunteers confronted a British system of education that was deeply entrenched in the local schools

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Arriving in Ethiopia more than 35 years ago, a group of American Peace Corps volunteers confronted a British system of education that was deeply entrenched in the local schools



Arriving in Ethiopia more than 35 years ago, a group of American Peace Corps volunteers confronted a British system of education that was deeply entrenched in the local schools

Leaving Tests (Not Children) Behind


by Richard C. Crepeau

Arriving in Ethiopia more than 35 years ago, a group of American Peace Corps volunteers confronted a British system of education that was deeply entrenched in the local schools. At its core was a national testing program that literally held the lives of students in balance.

Students were required to take exams at the conclusion of sixth, eighth and 12th grade. Those who passed continued on to the next level. After finishing college, the expectation was that these students would obtain an elite position, or perhaps have the opportunity to go abroad to study and further enhance their employment possibilities. Those who failed faced the prospect of marginal employment and a lifetime of poverty.

The anxiety this produced for the students was both overpowering and understandable. The entire curriculum was geared toward one achievement, and every activity of every school day was measured by one standard: Will this help me pass the exam?

This produced a pedagogical system where teachers wrote long and sometimes eloquent essays on the backboard. Students copied these in their lesson books. Then the students went off and memorized verbatim the material they had copied, reproducing it for examinations. There was no promotion of individual thought, analysis or reasoning. In the end, the test was the only thing that counted.

Peace Corps volunteers coming out of an American educational system that stressed reasoning, analytical ability and logic, or that found questions to be more important than answers, were poorly equipped to serve this system. Being Americans, the volunteers refused to accept what they had found. And, because the Americans were there to change the world, the battle began.

The students were the first to resist any change to the way in which they were taught. This was natural, of course, because they had the most to lose. In time, however, three things happened: The students, especially the better ones, came to appreciate and enjoy the new modes of classroom teaching. Then, after much initial anxiety, they found that the new methods didn't seem to have a negative affect on test performance. When the tests themselves were altered to stress more analytical ability and less rote memorization, the revolution was complete.

Students who had fought against the American approach now attacked the old methodologies and its practitioners. This, too, produced it's own set of difficulties between the American newcomers and the experienced teachers, especially the Indian teachers who were the bulwark of the British system. In the end, change was accepted, and, in my view, the move away from testing was the most important contribution that the Peace Corps made to education in Ethiopia. Learning had trumped memorization.

So it is with great dismay that I have witnessed the opposite developments in the last decade in American education. The testing craze here has become an epidemic. It has attracted a large following among politicians and the public who want accountability for the tax dollars spent on education.

During his State of the Union Address, President Bush praised the bi-partisan effort that led to the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. At the behest of politicians, America?s school children will be subjected to increasing numbers of tests to measure their achievement, which in turn will be interpreted as a measure of the effectiveness of the schools. Starting in 2003, states must annually test students in third through eighth grade in reading and math. Science tests will begin in 2007.

The central message of the legislation is that testing will solve our nation?s educational problems and reduce the achievement gap between poor and rich school districts. But a system of standardized testing results in the need for standardized knowledge. Such a process can only lead to a standardized curriculum, producing standardized students, able to pass standardized tests. Unfortunately, they will be equipped to do little else. The schools, as well as the students, are set up to pass or fail.

Students in some very successful school districts, such as Scarsdale, N.Y., have rebelled against the proclivity for testing -- with some students going so far as to boycott the tests, with their parents? permission. Their complaints are valid. As more tests are given, it will dictate the lives of students, the activities of teachers and the future of schools and school districts. Not only will the curriculum of the schools be narrowed, but classroom activity will be reduced to only one purpose.

This is not necessarily an either/or issue. It is, however, about priorities and how those priorities shape the minds of human beings. A public school system whose effectiveness is measured by test results will become a system that produces good test results. At the same time, it will risk becoming a system less concerned about learning, thinking and human creativity. In a worst-case scenario, it will produce very successful automatons.

More than three decades ago in the mountains of Ethiopia, Peace Corps teachers won an important victory for education. Now I watch in horror as the forces that were defeated in those mountains have come to claim a central place in American education. Testing is not the answer to the problems of education in a democratic society, as life is not a series of standardized tests. It is, instead, a formula for the de-education of America.

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Richard C. Crepeau is a professor of history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He is the author of Baseball: America?s Diamond Mind (click here to purchase).



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Story Source: Pop Politics

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Ethiopia; Education Systems

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