If We Know Better, We Do Better.

That’s what Oprah said so it must be true! 

So, I ask you: Why would anyone come to the conclusion that “Standardized Testing” would provide useful applicable information to the child or the system? Really, “No Child Left Behind” guarantees only the “standardized child” will succeed at standardized tests. All others may or may not succeed,if they are not quite ready to receive what society and when society offers your one chance to officially recieve it.

The solution to resolving our educational conundrum is as simple as knowing your customers. if we know better, we do better. Our children are not “protean” human  automatons. Serving our children as the whole individual beings they are, must be our goal. Not a dream, a goal. A dream has no pathway to become real; it passes, like the cloud in the sky. To have a goal requires: 1. a calendar 2. a plan 3. accountability. Let’s call this a goal. 

Standardized tests serve a “protean” race. We, here in this country, in this day and age are not our fullest “protean” potential.

If every child was the “macrostate child” shown in the chart from earlier posts, then one test would reflect the progress of each production unit microchip and direct pathways for acceptance, correction or rejection. US Schools; right, huh? (See post 11/20/2011)

A child’s body engages the presence of a flower according to its own developmental gifts, in the continuums of its environment. 

A child’s mind sees a flower in a very simple way. Each two children see the same flower through the complexity of different filters unique to each child. 

A child doesn’t need terms. Terms don’t fit into “now” time. The quality of experience being had by a child needs no interpretation within the child; that is, until he or she has to explain themselves to the rest of us. If your goal is to educate a child, make them feel safe enough to engage your curriculum the way their innocent non-conscious self engaged that flower so long ago.  

The difficulty comes in the ability to express their experience in any terms, to anyone, including themselves. Communication trees and forests. (See post 01/06/2012) At first small, if viable and successful, grow forth and multiply into great forests of understanding.

My first child was a son. His first word was light. Oh, not angelic airy new age light you might think from me, circa 1984. I would turn the light switch on and off again and again. Every time I turned the light on, I would say light. We spent a lot of time at this game and he loved it. He soon began to turn the light on and say light all by himself. The first seedling of his first communication tree. The appearance of light in his environment had an associated group of symbols representing his experience. He’d switch it on and utter the word light. In the early days of his language formation he would always look back to me for acceptance, correction or rejection. He has long since stopped checking with me.

It’s not the length of time from conception to any given point in time, that determines capability or capacity. That totally depends on how each child itself, with all its vast array of variables, blooms to its full potential. 

“Each according to their gifts, Captain.” is the actual quote. I got that from Spock in one of the “Star Trek” movies. Impeccable source, I must say. That’s the neat thing about truth; it  has “is” going for it. “Isness,” is a powerful argument.

Trouble starts when the story telling begins. With mutual respect, trust worthiness and sufficient common language; stories can be a powerful tool. Non-truthiness in a story is like corrupt script in computer code; a virus, if you will. A virus will consume its prey until the prey is gone, and then the virus with no more human cells to harvest, passes as well. Healthy human cells resist entropy. The healthy composition of now also resists entropy (See post 12/25/2011).

Each child is a member of the audience. Witness to the performance of a script written by the child him or her self. Each in their own time, each in their own way for they are the ones writing their stories, not you.  The place to have the most influence is at the place and time the stories are written within the individual. This is where changes in our approach to education can fundamentally effect the success of the individual.  

Age cannot remain the constant by which each child must fulfill some qualitative or quantitative benchmark or be found deficient. Each blooms in their own time, in accordance with how the opportunities provided by the environment intersect with the opportunities provided by each individual present self. There are other determining factors that are far more important than age to the successful development of the individual. 

A regimented hoop jumping test serves no one.  If hoop jumping is the task in question, gather a benchmark query and retest based on the benchmark for the individual and serve the needs of your curriculum by serving the needs of the child first. The curriculum will follow in its own time.  It’s hard to get a wheelchair through a hoop. Have you tried?

A system that is sensitive to the needs of the individual and serves those needs at a rate the individual can successfully assimilate, is a stark contrast to a standardized test serving a standardized child. No one can go faster than they can go. Not even you. I dare you to try it.

Take a look at the path of the “protean” child in the "macrostate chart" (See post of 11/20/2011). It is quite an illuminating graphic; however, it represents few real children. All of our developmental traits come in their own time and space; not Cartesian time or Newtonian space. 

We place right and wrong where there is no such thing possible. This planet earth human existence is a creative process, start to finish. In a creative process there is no right or wrong. There is only what doesn't work, what works and what works better. Oprah says, "If we know better, we do better."

Media, internet, technology has a place. Internet classes have subjects they may serve; however, some areas of human understanding are not well served by flash cards, slide shows and bubble tests. The bandwidth is just too narrow to convey our higher knowing, unless one already knows it. Words represent experience, not the experience itself. If you do not have the experience of love, all the symbols, words or pictures in the world will not teach you the experience of love. 

Socrates would be in tears.

Solution: Know your customers better, then serve your customers better.