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A comment on 'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her 8th Grade Students. Parent comment

Re:'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her... by vacri on Saturday March 24, 2012 @07:20AM (#3749082)
I am stunned that you think history is just a list of dates. It's an understanding of motives and events. WWII isn't just "from here to here", it's why each of the Axis powers did what they did. why the Allied powers did what they did. It does not matter that Pearl Harbour happened on Dec 7 1941, what matters is why the Japanese attacked, how it came about. Understanding both the US and Japanese points of view around that event. Understanding the different arguments for and against "I have in my hand a piece of paper", of leibensraum, of making the trains run on time (or at least saying you did)...

An understanding of history is essential to understand both why and how politics works in the modern day. To toss it all aside as 'dates, names, and places' is just... uneducated. From the rest of your comment, it sounds like you're a hard science person doing the usual thoughtless dismissal of the soft sciences.

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Re:'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her... by viraptor on Saturday March 24, 2012 @11:21AM (#3749567)
I think you're just confirming his position. He says he learnt because the tests required it. That information is what tests would require - dry facts, not understanding. And yeah - that would be uneducated. Isn't that why the tests exists - so that we aren't?
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Re:'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her... by slowpoke on Saturday March 24, 2012 @01:00PM (#3749874)
>Isn't that why the tests exists - so that we aren't?

False. Tests don't serve education, they hinder it. That's my entire point.

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Re:'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her... by tomprince on Saturday March 24, 2012 @11:23AM (#3749577)
Or perhaps simple presenting the view of history that was acquired from school. Demonstrating the limited viepoint that standardized testing promotes.
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