This sort of thing is not unique to China or "Asian cultures" but to all underdeveloped countries with too few good schools, where going to the wrong school can be a career death sentence.
Personal experience: I am from Turkey and had to go through two testing periods that determined my life: One, at 11, that determined which secondary school I could go to. Every private school had its own exam, so as a kid you had to take 6-8 exams in about two weeks (the system has changed since then, now there's a single exam).
The worse one was the university entrance exam (actually two exams, a couple of months apart): close to a million people took it with me. The top department in the top university admitted only about 50 students each year! These 2-3 hours really determined your future, since if you couldn't get admitted to the 1-2 popular universities your job prospects were pretty much doomed. I still remember the hordes of anxious parents waiting outside the building where the exam was held. The level of math and physics you had to know/memorize was mind boggling; compared to that, the math part of SAT is a joke.
I used to both envy the US students who didn't have to go through such a grueling, trial by fire selection process to go to good universities and also think that our selection process was much superior, since it it made you learn much more. After finishing my PhD in the US, teaching classes here, and working professionally, I now know that this is not true. This forced feeding approach to eduction mostly produces socially awkward, nerdy people who are experts but are not creative. I know, this is such a cliche, but believe me, I can back it up from personal observation in the workspace.
I think, neither the relaxed, "it's the job of the professor to make me learn" US college attitude nor the extremely competitive test based approach elsewhere is ideal. However, I think the correct approach is much closer to the former than the latter.
EDIT: Just remembered a personal experience that illustrates the point: I recently interviewed at a software company. One of my interviewers of Asian origin asked me an algorithmic question. I came up with an approach (admittedly not very good) and tried to give my reasons; he wasn't satisfied. At the end, he got up and declared "The answer is ..." He wasn't interested in a method or approach, but the answer. I think the worst thing that a test-based education can enforce is this "answer worship", since that is such a warped way to view problems.
The article hints that many frequent tests might actually be that middle ground. While one or two high-stakes tests that determine your entire career lead to a ton of stress and probably aren't a good measure of overall learning, many frequent tests that each individually aren't consequential allow kids to get a sense of their progress with less of the stress.
I really liked the Prof's Cizek's quote in the article: "What’s best for kids is frequent testing, where even if they do badly, they can get help and improve and have the satisfaction of doing better,” he said. “Kids don’t get self-esteem by people just telling them they are wonderful.”
The other point is that the tests should be "formative", which is educationalist babble for "just for fun".
Frequent summative (non-formative, i.e. stuff that determines which uni you go to, or whether you can progress to the next level) tests are bad and dangerous, as they force the kids to conform every day of their lives.
If kids want to blow off a formative test, then it's no big deal. If a kid makes a few silly mistakes, they don't have to beat themselves up. They shouldn't have to (or even want to) stay up to 2am cramming. They should be having fun with friends, learning to cook, playing sports, learning an instrument, or hacking on their graphics calculators. But if they flunk, it means they aren't learning, and something needs to be done.
You're right, the PC, "every child is special" approach in the US (esp. in colleges) is not doing the students any good and some level of rigorous reinforcement of knowledge is beneficial. However, tests let the kids focus only on the "answer" for a narrowly specified question. This may be good for school but is a horrible way to approach real-life problems which are broad and do nor have clear answers.
The case is similar in Spain; our universities are barely in the global top 200. The system used is: accept too many students in university to weed out those who can't memorise all the irrelevant material we teach them.
Spain ends up with people who regurgitate facts, but can't think.
Certainly in a very technical engineering school. But you can't honestly compare GCSEs to ESO or A-levels to selectividad: reasoning is far less important that just repeating facts (this was especially obvious to me with history, for example).
For the UK/US-equivalent Secondary, in Spain I did BUP (Secondary) and COU (College orientation course), and not ESO (new Secondary Education arrangement). Younger people at work seem to be OK in reasoning (computer/software engineering field).
However, I do not endorse current "ESO+Bachillerato", as in my opinion it is easier than previous "BUP+COU". From my point of view, Goverment of Spain should copy the Finnish or German secondary education system, as it's been proved to be better.
What I can't believe is why you are so riled up: I have read the article, part of my comment was about testing for young children. If you care to read my comment, you'll see that the point I was trying to make was that constant testing, as the article proposes, leads to a toxic educational atmosphere where students learn greedy optimization for each test.
Here's another point: You have to learn to be more civil in arguments, even those you don't quite agree.
The article doesn't talk about huge tests that determine your future, but you are. You say:
> part of my comment was about testing for young children
The only bit you seem to have about testing you children is this:
> One, at 11, that determined which secondary school
> I could go to. Every private school had its own exam,
> so as a kid you had to take 6-8 exams in about two
> weeks
This is exactly what the article is not talking about. The article is talking about exactly the opposite of this - it's talking about having tests, small ones, fast ones, fun ones, literllay every week, if not every day.
You claim:
> constant testing, as the article proposes, leads
> to a toxic educational atmosphere where students
> learn greedy optimization for each test.
The article says this doesn't happen, and you don't appear to provide any evidence that it does. You don't talk about that situation, you only talk about the major testing periods that are critical.
Finally, you say:
> You have to learn to be more civil in arguments,
> even those you don't quite agree.
I don't believe he was being incivil. He said that your arguments don't appear to apply to the article. Your arguments appear to be about situations other than in the article. In that, he appears to be right.
I agree with your comments. I think most people here will. The huge pressure, incredibly important, major testing periods to determine your future are toxic.
Sorry for the long post, but this is one of my pet peeves: I am a still recovering test addict.
Let me make my argument more clear: You (and the article) seem to believe that it's an either/or situation with the 1-2 large tests and having a lot of small tests (e.g. every week). I don't think this is the case. In fact, the constant testing arises as a byproduct of the large, life determining tests. I didn't make this very clear perhaps.
Coming back to my example: The private school entrance exams (taken at 11) were few and concentrated in a couple of weeks. Yet, since everybody practically started preparing for those exams from the start of primary school (at 7), you had to, too. Understanding wasn't important, creativity wasn't important, it all boiled down to how good a test taker you are. Ditto, for the university entrance exams. The only difference is that by then the test culture was very well ingrained. So, to reiterate, my point was that critical testing periods lead to constant testing.
My second point was that this is bad. This is debatable and, of course, I don't have scientific data to back me up, only anecdotal data gained from observing first my classmates and now my colleagues from different countries (esp. China) who were raised in a similar test-based culture.
I think judging students predominantly by tests (which is what constant testing is about, i.e. the "Google Analytics" approach) are bad for a couple of reasons:
(i) Some people just don't perform well under stress. This is something I've seen some people have a very hard time learning, even after years of test taking.
(ii) It creates a culture where you are reduced to a performance number. We (in Turkey) learned this when we were very young, you are what you do on the test, and don't get me wrong, I thought this was the best way (since I was good). In my undergrad, professors use to hang exam scores on their office doors and we made fun of people with low scores. We didn't find this appalling, we were the best of the best (50 out of a million) and anyone who cannot do good deserved the ridicule. All we thought were the scores, not what we wanted to do in life, if we had an entrepreneurial streak, etc. Just how well did you do in the last test. We were raised like prize race horses, who had to run the fastest.
(iii) So, my final point. Actually, until the end of my PhD in the US the state I was in didn't bother me, after all being an alpha test taker had served me well. I crushed my American classmates in exams, did well, etc. Only after I started my career that I sensed something was wrong. First, years of testing had trained me on a stimulus-response basis: I learned that if I studied well, I would do well on the exam (most of the time). I found that success in real life wasn't as simple, there are office politics, stupid managers, back stabbing galore. The fact that I couldn't do best when I worked the most frustrated me greatly. But what was worse is that many problems I encountered did not fit into simple question/answer approach I knew how to tackle so well after decades of training. I found that complex tradeoffs between many factors was in fact the essence of engineering. I can say that years of test taking didn't really prepare me for my job.
After I wizened to this fact I looked around and saw similar patterns in my foreign colleagues, except most were nor retrospective enough to see what they lacked. I've been trying to correct for my decades of miseducation ever since.
P.S. As for the "uncivil" comment, I think asserting that a commentor "clearly did not read the article" is uncivil, if not on Reddit on HN.
OK, I think I see the misunderstand / impedance mis-match.
It seems to me that you're seeing all these small tests as preparation for the big tests. You seem to see the small tests as requiring cramming, and that the results from them hang over you. You seem to see them as boxing you in, converting you to a number.
That's not how it's supposed to go.
The point is not to have the tests arising from the culture of the large, life determining tests. The point is to have small, fast, fun tests where it's possible to get an answer wrong and not care. It should be possible to try something off-the-wall in a test, and should it work you get a reward, and if it doesn't work it doesn't really matter. Do it differently next time.
All the points you make are valid, but I think they are still to one side of the intention of the article, and other discussions. I agree entirely that pure "teaching to the test" and "the one true answer - or else" are deeply destructive to the attitudes that are more creative, inventive, and possible more useful in the real world. But I don't think that's the point.
There's a shed-load of stuff for kids to learn, and while exploratory, enabled learning can be effective, it can also be patchy and slow. It can be deep, but it often isn't wide, and it doesn't serve all children equally well.
And to some extent, that's the point. No single system fits every teacher-student pair, and yet that's what people tend to end up with. Teachers are forced to follow the latest fad, even if it doesn't suit their style. Children are exposed to current "best practice" with little of no feedback.
It's the feedback that counts.
If tests are normal, fun, expected and de rigueur then the kids get less stressed, and the teachers get more feedback about their understanding and abilities. Then the best teachers can adapt their presentation to the kids.
It's a tool, a technique, an option. It's not a silver bullet. But it's also not what you are arguing against. You are making valid, but different, points.
Thanks for the comments. After years of teaching college undergraduate I totally agree with you on the "a lot of feedback is good" approach. We also agree that we cannot do away with the tests altogether.
My point was that although lots of tests->feedback->better performance is a valid and strong argument, in practice it degenerates into what I describe, at least from what I've seen. If the barrage of tests are well balanced with interactive activities that build on creativity and teamwork, that'll be a perfect combination. Hard to achieve, though, I think.
You're mistaken about the article... The testing way that is being discussed is NOT about the university test (which nobody is arguing for, it's pretty stupid), but frequent testing early in life.
This is already gaining significant traction in the US, as is said in the article.
> the university test (which nobody is arguing for, it's pretty stupid),
While this is not what the article is about, university entrance examinations seem to be commonplace around the world. It may not be perfect but it's hardly "stupid". In fact I find the American system rather bizarre.
Current college admissions concern themselves with various standardized tests... and then a plethora of other data. Making a decision on many, or even too many data points is always better than a decision made based on only 1 number. I don't see how that's debatable.
Most of the other data is used primarily to restrict access to certain "tribes", not to select good students.
(By "tribe", I mean certain personality types and cultural groupings, not ethnic tribes. Though of course, the other data points are used to reward certain ethnic groups as well.)
I think test taking becomes a culture after a while, defines the education. Do you really expect to have no/less tests later in life, e.g. for colleges, once it's firmly instantiated early in life? Why is university entrance exams is deemed to be stupid and not similar tests for five year olds?
I don't think that's the case. Atleast not in the US. Traditionally you were asked to take 2 tests to get into university, SAT or ACT. Around the turn of the century some of the schools dropped that requirement. What changed? The realization that 12 years of school couldn't be summed up in one saturday afternoon test. Good students were being overlooked for good test takers.
The article is saying that summative tests are their not to help the student but to help the university. It really should be the other way around.
I didn't and the article certainly didn't say anything about university entrance examsesque tests for five year olds.
They said frequent testing, and the more tests you have, the less important each individual test becomes. If you have a test every week in every subject, then at the end you won't need a gargantuan test that supposedly summarizes a couple of years of knowledge.
You have a ton more data to look at a student from.
I don't see why you would ever want NO testing. What you want is CONSTANT testing, like we have Google Analytics on all the time, not just for 2 hours to 'test' some situation.
I never proposed having no tests (so you're no stranger to strawman arguments after all :-). My point was that constant testing was wrong. Judging by your naive comparison to Google Analytics, I think that you haven't been subjected to a brutal regimen of constant testing, starting at 7, as I was.
Interesting Chinese test taking fact: in the recent past, the final test in high school in China (University entrance / SAT equivalent) was taken so seriously that children who traveled (from more rural areas) would be given a military escort in order to ensure they were present. The result of that test basically dictated a major part of the rest of students' lives.
The test taking tradition is centuries old in China - one of the emperors (forget which one) made many of the civil servant type positions require exams in order to cut down on the cronyism that was rampant at the time. It worked and the tradition stuck for quite a long time.
It's actually a good way to ensure that only bright, hard working students get filtered into top positions. At least, it's better than the usual alternatives - nepotism, cronyism, plutocratic selection, and politicking.
Of course, the test degraded (over centuries) to a several day exam, where students were expected to write a massive essay. So they just competed to smuggle in lots of stock essays that they could just copy an appropriate one out.
So what does this mean? Clearly there's more to it than just "more testing is necessary!" or the reverse. Is the Anglosphere in some "unhappy middle", where moving towards either more OR less testing would help? Is the amount of testing in fact orthogonal to school performance? I know both Finland and China are said to have high levels of societal respect for education, perhaps that's the crucial factor—but I'm not aware of any good measurements of this, maybe it's anecdotal.
Another hypothesis is that there's a fairly hard limit to how well children can be educated at this point in time, and that the best schools in Finland, China and the U.S. all near this limit. In China we only look at the best schools and students, and with so many people in China the best will look pretty good. Finland has very high equality and homogeneity, so the worst schools aren't so far off from the best, and the whole country comes out looking good. The U.S., however, has many badly funded schools and marginalized populations, so that could make the difference. Then the question becomes whether we can approach Finland's success, or if the Anglo countries are too inherently different. Again, this entire paragraph is truly rampant speculation, and my mind and gut are both skeptical.
I like your comment. You probably are not German, but if, you would like the texts of Reinhard Kahl (http://reinhardkahl.de/). His texts are basically about the question 'What kind of school works', and actually 'What do we mean by "school works"'. Among others he tried hard to demystifiying the success of the finnish school system in the first PISA test, argueing against just copying blindly some aspects that _seemed_ important (e.g. like you, he pointed out that 'education' was socially highly respected in Finnland, unlike in most other european countries). He constantly writes about (german) schools that achieve very good results in tests like PISA, highlighting what they do differently. It is quite interesting that he often finds methods or techniques in these schools that fit really well a lot of findings in neuroscience and psychology (without the teachers at these school knowing anything about these findings!). So what are some things he advocates: (i) no longer teach in a fixed classroom setting, instead, every student should learn by himself, according to weekly/monthly/yearly plans that are setup together with his teacher(s) [main reason for this: every human is special, our brains do not develop at the same speed at the same time] (ii) do not kill the researcher in the children, instead foster playfulness in live and study and show that effort is something deeply satisfying (iii) Authentic teachers, authentic parents, authentic grown-ups (iv) Bring the 'real' live/world into the school (vi) open the school up to the 'real' live, schools should be centers in our society, (vii) at school you don't teach subjects, you teach human beings (viii) there is no school to rule them all and many more aspects. I like his stuff so much because he shows and describes places that really work, and also manages to write about philosophical aspects of these questions (he often connects to writings from Hannah Arendt about eduction).
PS: I'm aware that I can't give justice to the stuff Kahl writes, what I have written is quite incomplete. But one has to read it on its own. I'm also aware that some of this stuff is only relevant for german schools, yet I think the broader questions is relevant for all countries.
PPS: Refrain from calling me a hippy, a dreamer, a communist or any other stereotype _you_ think is negative. I went through the normal (german) school and university system and it gradually became clear to me, that things as they were and are working are not as good as we want to think, actually, things are rather bad. I'm looking for new ways and possible solutions, trying to find the right questions.
Sounds interesting, do you happen to know if any Kahl is in translation? A quick google picks up nothing.
I'm curious how he would explain the success of schools in places such as Eastern Europe and China. More testing, regimented learning, little focus on individual needs...these seems like the opposite of what he's recommending, but it still works somehow.
PS: I think everyone on HN is a bit of a dreamer, no? :)
Well, yes and no. Grades went out of favor because there actually is a considerable body of research pointing to the fact that grades are harmful. What they do is not simply pointing out weaknesses but establishing a ranking. One schildert is suddenly 10% "better" than another because of that seemingly objective number below the test.
It reduces children (who are sensitive to messages like that) from a full person with a unique character to their performance as tested. If you haven't yet developed the necessary cynicism to deal with this onedimensional assessment of personhood, you will quickly. If that is actually desirable is another matter.
Tests teach discipline, and they are the most practical way of testing knowledge in some areas. However, no matter how you make the metric, this problem is largely psychological.
To do well, a student must be motivated to learn. And one of the biggest motivators at this level is that "I always am at the top of my class in this subject, so I enjoy it." Not everyone can be at the top, so naturally the others won't care as much. They will stop trying to get an A and settle with "not failing." And the students who start failing will stop caring completely.
If you hide a student's ranking, then that initial motivation, "I do better than the others," disappears and we are left with students who must be entirely self motivated. And that happens so rarely that it isn't a practical motivator.
On one hand, a poor measurement of teaching performance do more harm than good. However, it is also true that human judgement of student performance can easily be skewed in various ways.
So, the solution is to find some kind of measurement that accurately reflect somewhat student progress. This way, teachers can reliably test education experiments. Of course, the larger problem is probably the teachers' possible resistance to the scientific method and poor training in devising experiments.
If integrated into daily routine, quizzes are no more anxiety-producing that, for instance, sprints as warmup in {name any sport}. It can be a fast way to get the mental juices flowing.
This is way too much discussion about way too little. Leave it up to the teacher to choose how and when to drill, measure, and stretch their pupils.
“Research has long shown that more frequent testing is beneficial to kids, but educators have resisted this finding,” said Gregory J. Cizek, a professor of educational measurement and evaluation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
How convenient that the "research" confirms his relevance.
I completely agree. This article is full of oddities like that, drawing correlations in places where it does not necessitate causation.
"These are not the big once-a-year or once-in-a-lifetime exams, like the SATs, but a stream of smaller, less monumental tests, designed in theory, at least, primarily to help students and their teachers know how they’re doing"
How profound. How exactly does that differ from current exams!? K-12 students don't have once-in-a-lifetime exams - they have less monumental tests that already take the focus away from what school is for - learning - not assessing. More assessments will lead to more focus on passing assessments and less focus on students and then less learning. Who can argue this? The fact that Chinese schools may possibly (which I'm suspicious of in the first place) have more tests, should in now way be seen as a cause for better learning. Here are a number of things the Chinese do better than most in the states that would lead to superior education:
1. Parents are more involved in their kids education.
2. Students are more involved in their own education.
3. Teachers are more involved in quality teaching/mentoring.
4. Teaching/learning methodologies are better.
In addition, the article ends with one of the author's children asking [while in a class that has no tests]:
“How do I know if I get what’s going on in math class?”
I find this kind of thinking dangerous in that this question is essentially asking another person to think for you. Sometimes the answer should be a string of questions, not always a test.
What do you feel you have learnt? Do you remember anything? Do you feel it has changed you? Was anything memorable? Did you enjoy the class? Do you enjoy doing problems? Do they interest you? Do you feel you are learning well?...Please think about it, child. What do you feel?
"How profound. How exactly does that differ from current exams!? K-12 students don't have once-in-a-lifetime exams - they have less monumental tests that already take the focus away from what school is for - learning - not assessing"
Many schools today have eliminated all tests for younger children. Think about this. No tests at all, IMO, cannot be a good thing.
In some cases I agree that eliminating all tests is bad, especially if nothing else changes. It's especially bad when tests are eliminated without teachers changing their style. If you're going to change one you have to change the other.
Children do need to be assessed and challenged. Sitting a child down with a pencil and paper is not the only method of assessing a child, and most definitely not the most effective.
Personal experience: I am from Turkey and had to go through two testing periods that determined my life: One, at 11, that determined which secondary school I could go to. Every private school had its own exam, so as a kid you had to take 6-8 exams in about two weeks (the system has changed since then, now there's a single exam).
The worse one was the university entrance exam (actually two exams, a couple of months apart): close to a million people took it with me. The top department in the top university admitted only about 50 students each year! These 2-3 hours really determined your future, since if you couldn't get admitted to the 1-2 popular universities your job prospects were pretty much doomed. I still remember the hordes of anxious parents waiting outside the building where the exam was held. The level of math and physics you had to know/memorize was mind boggling; compared to that, the math part of SAT is a joke.
I used to both envy the US students who didn't have to go through such a grueling, trial by fire selection process to go to good universities and also think that our selection process was much superior, since it it made you learn much more. After finishing my PhD in the US, teaching classes here, and working professionally, I now know that this is not true. This forced feeding approach to eduction mostly produces socially awkward, nerdy people who are experts but are not creative. I know, this is such a cliche, but believe me, I can back it up from personal observation in the workspace.
I think, neither the relaxed, "it's the job of the professor to make me learn" US college attitude nor the extremely competitive test based approach elsewhere is ideal. However, I think the correct approach is much closer to the former than the latter.
EDIT: Just remembered a personal experience that illustrates the point: I recently interviewed at a software company. One of my interviewers of Asian origin asked me an algorithmic question. I came up with an approach (admittedly not very good) and tried to give my reasons; he wasn't satisfied. At the end, he got up and declared "The answer is ..." He wasn't interested in a method or approach, but the answer. I think the worst thing that a test-based education can enforce is this "answer worship", since that is such a warped way to view problems.