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.
The article doesn't talk about huge tests that determine your future, but you are. You say:
The only bit you seem to have about testing you children is this: 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:
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:
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.
But that's not what the article is about.