Higher-Order Thinking Or That’s All He/She Rote?

Teaching rhetoric and composition at the University of Idaho and Penn State University, I found that most of the students entering my classes couldn’t think. I don’t mean to imply that they were dumb; they were far from it. My students were well-versed in the basics. These were smart young people; after all, they were college students.

Still, they could not think “critically.” They could not analyze a text for underlying assumptions or logical errors. When pressed on difficult issues or asked complex questions, they would invariably parrot what they had heard from parents, friends, or TV rather than attempt to generate original ideas.

They had learned how to get knowledge, but not how to use the knowledge they had acquired. These young people, having scored high on their SATs, had arrived at college ill-prepared for the rigorous thinking higher education demands.

Now, President Clinton has proposed a national testing program for school children. A lot of well-intentioned people have jumped onto the testing bandwagon but they haven’t considered the negative effects. Standardized tests cannot measure creativity, problem solving or critical thinking. In fact, as Elspeth Stuckey explains in “The Violence of Literacy,” about the only things standardized tests measure is how well children can take these tests.

Standardized tests produce numbers that government officials can use to leverage tax dollars or to measure their students’ progress against those in other cities, states and countries. But testing alone will not ensure smarter students. And if we make standardized tests the barometer of our children’s success in school, we will force our teachers to waste precious time teaching for the tests.

Do we want graduates who can memorize and parrot back lots of disconnected information, or do we want graduates who can solve problems and think critically? Do we want citizens who blindly follow their government, or do we want citizens who can play an active part in the political process and question the words and actions of elected leaders?

As a former educator, a parent, and a concerned citizen, I know how I would answer these questions. Standardized tests can be a useful tool, but we must not think testing will be the magic bullet that will cure the problems with our education system or with our country.

MEMO: Your Turn is a feature of the Wednesday and Saturday Opinion pages. To submit a Your Turn column for consideration, contact Rebecca Nappi at 459-5496 or Doug Floyd at 459-5466 or write Your Turn, The Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615.