howard wainer on testing

Joe Bower maintains the excellent blog, for the love of learning,  and he put this up with a recommendation to listen and it is very interesting.

But we don't need expert analysis of complex testing issues to recognize the inhumanity of testing that supports a factory approach to education that is authoritarian and undemocratic and forced on children and young people.  We just need to know that treating our kids well will always be the way forward.

The talk by Howard Wainer is below. Note that he differentiates between schooling and education and insists that schooling is what we are referring to when discussing what happens in a school whereas education may or not may not happen, the words should be separate. Homeschooling activists know this.

Wainer discusses issues about score scales and many other inequities and class warfare methods used on our children by forced mass schooling and its use to ensure a system of credentialing to preserve class status.

We shouldn't subject families to this sort of manipulation: we need schools that provide voluntary and humane learning services for citizens who choose what they want and need.  And kids can go on the record and build portfolios for credentials when they choose.  We don't need to use Victorian methods in the 21st century.


via for love of learning