The Saybrook Forum

Test score fiascos demonstrate, again, how much American education needs a humanistic mission

What’s that?  There was widespread cheating on standardized tests in the Atlanta school system? 

Surprise surprise …

It’s gotten to the point where you can reasonably expect:  if a school district or state doubles down on standardized testing, forces teachers and schools to be held accountable for student scores, and then announcing amazing gains, a major cheating scandal will follow like night and day.

Texas, Washington D.C., Atlanta … all of the “miracle”gains caused by overemphasis on standardized tests have been increases only in smoke and mirrors. 

So our emphasis on high stakes testing isn’t actually increasing student learning … and it’s causing what one analyst called “management by fear” in school systems.  That can’t be good for teachers or principles.

It’s worse for students.  As the Triple-Pundit blog noted, standardized testing actually impedes students’ ability to engage in systems thinking … exactly the kind of creative problem solving most valuable in the 21^st century. 

What are we doing?  Why would we constantly push an educational practice that creates climates of fear, encourage cheating, hurts creative systems thinking, and doesn’t even improve performance? 

Why do we do that?

What's college for in the 21st century?

In a recent essay for The New Yorker, Louis Menard recalls the first time a student ever asked him “Why did we have to read this book?”  It’s the more direct way of asking:  what is this education good for?

It was, apparently, the first time he’d ever thought of the question himself. 

He writes: 

I could see that this was not only a perfectly legitimate question; it was a very interesting question. The students were asking me to justify the return on investment in a college education. I just had never been called upon to think about this before. It wasn’t part of my training. We took the value of the business we were in for granted.

The answer, he decided, depends on what college is for – and nobody’s really sure of that, anymore, are they?

Calling Existentialists in the San Francisco Bay area

Do you want to connect with other existentially oriented therapists in the Bay Area?  

The Existential Humanistic Institute is hosting a Learning Community on Thursday, July 7, to connect people interested in existential therapy and see how a vibrant existential culture can address local and global needs. 

A Learning Community is a social forum in which people who share a common interest can get together and network, share resources and ideas, brainstorm, and build a local support system in the psychological world at large. Learning community meetings can look very different depending on who organizes them, but the common thread which they all share is that they bring people together who have diverging interests. It is also helpful to invite people from other professions (e.g. – the artistic community, the teaching community, the medical community) to create an integrative grassroots forum.

The EHI’s Learning Community meeting will be held:

• Date:  Thursday, July 7th, 2011
• Time:  7:00 - 9:00 PM
• Location: Laguna Grove Care
• Address:  624 Laguna St.  Map  http://tinyurl.com/427obrj 
• San Francisco, CA  94102

For more information, contact Candice Hershman