Showing posts with label Flaming Bicycles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flaming Bicycles. Show all posts

Monday, September 28, 2009

That's What I'm Screaming

Read this NYTimes op ed piece for jewels of educational reason such as this:

One of the tests I scored had students read a passage about bicycle safety. They were then instructed to draw a poster that illustrated a rule that was indicated in the text. We would award one point for a poster that included a correct rule and zero for a drawing that did not.

The first poster I saw was a drawing of a young cyclist, a helmet tightly attached to his head, flying his bike over a canal filled with flaming oil, his two arms waving wildly in the air. I stared at the response for minutes. Was this a picture of a helmet-wearing child who understood the basic rules of bike safety? Or was it meant to portray a youngster killing himself on two wheels?

And trust me, it gets better. When will we realize that unstandardizable standardized tests are a complete fallacy?