Every hour spent drilling students to ace these exams is an hour not spent helping them become creative, critical, curious learners. Taylor, Beginning to Read and the Spin Doctors of Science , p. 325. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future. The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.
Books are, after all, dangerous stuff.
Young, old, African American, Jewish were joined together in a celebration of each other. They celebrated a new understanding that our project helped them achieve. They embraced the differences that one time kept them apart. Find me the standardized test that can measure the meaning of that embrace. There is no way to adequately prepare students for these tests without turning our classrooms into vast wading pools of information for students to memorize without critical reflection.