When Parents Yank Their Kids Out of Standardized Tests

[ieoeja]

25. Richard Feynmann illustrated this problem in his bio.

Feynmann headed the computer** staff at Los Alamos during the development of the Bomb. In the 1960s he was invited to Brazil where he got to review their education system. He was surprised to find their high school students using the same Physics text books that Americans used in college. And they were scoring just as well as the American college students on those tests you find in the teacher's version of that book.

The reason this so surprised him was that there were very few noted Brazilian physicists. So he made up new tests. The American college students scored just as well on those tests as they had on the standard tests. Most Brazilian students failed.

When he spoke to Brazilian teachers they told him that they were judged by their students tests. So they taught the students the specific problems that were in the book, rather than teaching them a real understanding of the underlying physics. When faced with new problems that used the same physics, the pupils did not know what to do. They had learned the answers, not the physics required to figure out the answers themselves.

When a teacher's job is ensure students pass a test, they will teach students to pass the test rather than teach them the information the test is meant to verify they possess. We know this because Brazil was doing this back in the 1960s. It failed.



**Before someone shouts "liar, they didn't have any computers at Los Alamos," let me point out that a person who computes is rightfully called a computer. Members of his staff were the computers, not some electronic machine.