Fair enough. I'm not sure I believe there's no way to do both -- in the end, I think a lot of the problem here is the fact that school systems aren't adequately supported. But I just thought it might be worth thinking about whether or not test scores are automatically as much a determiner of your true worth as a person as people make them out to be...
There's a lot of assumption in this thread that testing well means you actually _are_ a 'superior' member of society, and will inevitably lead to your becoming an adult who contributes more to the whole than those with lower performance levels -- and thus, of _course_ we should be focusing on those children. Aren't they the ones who will make the world better for us all?
But is that really true? It leads very quickly to two questions I'd ask: First, how much of a correlation is there, in the end, between high marks in school and success in the life that begins after graduation? Is there no way you can become a success if you didn't test well?
Second, what _is_ a success? If you teach a bad-tempered child who had a poor family life to become an adult who yes, holds a low-paying service job, but does it well and builds a caring, compassionate life for their famliy -- is that a success or a failure? There's no doubt that a teacher who was able to devote the necessary attention to a child in that situation can make a difference.
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Fair enough. I'm not sure I believe there's no way to do both -- in the end, I think a lot of the problem here is the fact that school systems aren't adequately supported. But I just thought it might be worth thinking about whether or not test scores are automatically as much a determiner of your true worth as a person as people make them out to be ...
There's a lot of assumption in this thread that testing well means you actually _are_ a 'superior' member of society, and will inevitably lead to your becoming an adult who contributes more to the whole than those with lower performance levels -- and thus, of _course_ we should be focusing on those children. Aren't they the ones who will make the world better for us all? But is that really true? It leads very quickly to two questions I'd ask: First, how much of a correlation is there, in the end, between high marks in school and success in the life that begins after graduation? Is there no way you can become a success if you didn't test well? Second, what _is_ a success? If you teach a bad-tempered child who had a poor family life to become an adult who yes, holds a low-paying service job, but does it well and builds a caring, compassionate life for their famliy -- is that a success or a failure? There's no doubt that a teacher who was able to devote the necessary attention to a child in that situation can make a difference.
Yeah, I'd assume that's the main reason -- they want to force people to sign up for additional accounts.