Teaching to the Test

It's that time of year again. I have precisely nine instructional days remaining before the end of the school year. I've officially entered Regents Review Time. Hell, who am I kidding? I've been in Regents Review Time since the last week in April. That's one of the numerous reasons you haven't been getting weekly updates from me over the past month/year/whatever. I managed to finish my yearly curriculum just before the kiddies went away for their Spring Break, which involved me spending a marvelous week in Philly with SecondLaw. Upon their return, I gave the kids the first of nine packets, each containing about 100 questions, organized by subject, covering every conceivable subject that we've talked about since September.

Well, almost. I admit, I didn't really cover the folding and faulting of crust, since there will maybe be one question (if any) about that on the test. I also taught a large, extended unit on biological evolution, though it certainly won't appear on the test, mainly because I feel that citizens of the world should have at least a cursory understanding of the lynchpin of modern biology, even if our country's President does not. With those two relatively minor exceptions, I've covered the scope and sequence of Earth Science as dictated by the State of New York, plus a sprinkling of cool topics that keep the kids interested --volcanoes, black holes, the heat death of the universe-- but are conspicuously absent from the test.

So six weeks later, the kids have completed all their review packets, I've killed 14 trees with all the paper I've printed, and it's time to see how the kids fare on a real Regents exam. So last Friday I ended the week on a high note by giving them a damn big test. The results are in, and my Thesis of Human Stupidity remains unshaken. Granted, the test was multiple choice, so I still have to account for random guessing, but nevertheless I can't ignore some of the answers that my students chose.

Which instrument is used to measure wind speed?

D. Thermometer (chosen by 2 students)

How many hours occurred between sunrise and solar noon on September 23rd?

C. 12 hours (chosen by 49 students)

D. 24 hours (chosen by 3 students)

What is the inferred age of our Solar System, in millions of years?

A. 544 (chosen by 12 students)

D. 10,000 (chosen by 24 students)

For that last one, please keep in mind that they can use a chart which describes the major events in Earth's history, along with a timescale that tells when everything happened, back to and including the formation of the Earth 4,600 million years ago. Between that and the number of students who think sunrise happens at midnight (or noon on the day before), not to mention the students who have a seriously skewed view of the uses of a rectal thermometer, let's just say I'm not exactly sure that many of them are prepared to pass a Regents exam.

I think the basic problem is that the Earth Science Regents, unlike many other exams, doesn't actually require them to memorize and regurgitate a bunch of facts. You know, like: who was Robespierre, what were the consequences of the Teapot Dome scandal, how many degrees are there in a triangle? Instead, the E.S. Regents hands the kids a 16-page packet containing the aforementioned chart, among other useful references, and expects them to solve questions by correctly reading the chart, analyzing the question, and synthesizing an answer using the tools available to them and their residual knowledge of things we talked about in class.

This does not work well. Most of these students are very concrete thinkers. They view the world in tiny, independent pieces of information. Frankly, the short attention span of our sound-bite/YouTube/Tivo culture isn't helping them to develop a deep understanding or appreciation of anything anytime soon. Making new connections between different ideas and using old information to make sense of newly-acquired data are foreign concepts to them. They don't organize ideas into hierarchical structures and sort it by applicability or relevance; they can't pick out the important information in a graph, map, or figure, and they get discouraged when asked to read more than seven consecutive words about any one subject.

Sometimes I feel like throwing a copy of the Journal of Sedimentology at them to see their reaction to the "Palaeoenvironments, palaeogeography, and physiography of a large, shallow, muddy ramp: Late Cenomanian-Turonian Kaskapau Formation, Western Canada foreland basin" or some other such article. Other times I feel like locking them in a windowless room with nothing but the classics of Western literature and a year's supply of food and water to see if they actually start reading or use the larger books as blunt instruments of death to kill their rivals and steal their food. I mostly think it'd be the latter option. With that in mind, I recommend Tolstoy and Dickens for sheer weight, and Ayn Rand for the added insult of being beaten to death by the most overrated books of the twentieth century. Sorry, but she's preachy as hell, her sex scenes are accurately recreated by mixed martial arts competitors, and there are no shortage of smug people who believe themselves to be really really special precious little snowflakes after reading her books and have forgotten the dictum of the Thesis of Human Stupidity which specifically states that people are stupid.

Wow. That turned into a little rant there. Anyway, the point is that I'm not so sure that my students (and many Objectivists) have the capacity for complex symbolic thought that the E.S. Regents requires. I guess I'll find out soon enough. They're scheduled to take their exam on June 20th. I have between then and now to prepare them as best I can. When will then be now? Soon.