Shri Kapil Sibal is moving towards making school education more "holistic" in India - an effort most of us agree with - but he is also moving to reduce drastically the number, type and intensity of tests.
Honestly, that scares me. Mindless testing is, well, mindless, but are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater? The positive global identity of India in recent times has been shaped by the tens of thousands of analytically strong Indians who, despite a crushing lack of exposure in their homeland (to technology, to processes, to reliable electricity and running water in their homes), are able to tackle, say, the IT problems of the world because they have the analytical skills to wrap their minds around them.
Interestingly, new research appears to underscore the importance of testing. In an article in the New York Times titled "Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits" (incidentally the most emailed article on that site for several days running), Benedict Carey describes some of these experiments. A portion of
the article is reproduced below.
(C)ognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.
Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of measuring a property of a particle alters that property: “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.
In one of his own experiments, Dr. Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, also of Washington University, had college students study science passages from a reading comprehension test, in short study periods. When students studied the same material twice, in back-to-back sessions, they did very well on a test given immediately afterward, then began to forget the material.
But if they studied the passage just once and did a practice test in the second session, they did very well on one test two days later, and another given a week later.
“Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”
Another article regarding the Chinese emphasis on testing can be found here. Chinese students are, perhaps consequently, extremely good at maths and analysis. The author, Elisabeth Rosenthal, quotes a Professor Cizek who specializes in educational measurement and evaluation:
“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.”
Testing in the Indian education system definitely needs to become more feedback oriented, rather than marks oriented. That said, I would rather that we in India not give up on the academic rigor that testing alone can bring. In my personal opinion, we should not destroy the existing framework unless we are sure we know what we are doing. Even the US is moving back towards more testing, somewhat regretting its rather relaxed approach in the past towards school education. In terms of academic rigor, I'd rather India continue to refine its own approach than follow the (old) US schooling model blindly.
By the way, one model I really admire is the German model for craftspeople. Having suffered at the hands of incompetent electricians, plumbers, carpenters and masons (among several other trades) and seen the supreme ability of their German counterparts, I can confidently say that India needs something like this desperately. No one will dispute that in this area, we can only improve. Why aren't we spending more time on this instead?
