In Deschooling Society (1971), Ivan Illich warns of the dangers of an education system in which measurable objectives are the measure of all things. Today's post begins a series of quotes from Deschooling Society, offered for the purpose of encouraging reflection on our education system's obsession with testing and an increasingly standardized curriculum.
"School pretends to break learning up into subject 'matters,' to build into the pupil a curriculum made of these prefabricated blocks, and to gauge the result on an international scale. People who submit to the standard of others for the measure of their own personal growth soon apply the same ruler to themselves. They no longer have to be put in their place, but put themselves into their assigned slots, squeeze themselves into the niche which they have been taught to seek, and in the very process, put their fellows into their places, too, until everybody and everything fits."
Currently, Finland has been leading the way in international test scores. As my website report on the Finnish education system shows, teachers were not encouraged to teach to the test. In fact, the nation was surprised to learn they came out on top. More to the point for this post, the outcome of the tests revealed the smallest gap between the highest and lowest scores.
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