A critique by Evan Rushton of
Looking
Closely: Toward a Natural History of Human Ingenuity
by Ray McDermott and Jason Raley
Ray and Jason, you had me at “We agree.” (p. 1)
“…people are usually ingenious, both
locally in their most personal circumstances and collectively in their most
distributed consequences. In coordinating with each other, people show
themselves, to those who would look carefully, to be orderly, knowledgeable,
and precise. Given the demands of necessity, they do well what has to be done
even if under limiting, or worse, pathological conditions.” (p 1)
I agree in the contrapositive of the final statement
regarding a lack of ingenuity among spoiled children: “They do poorly what has
to be done, without the demands of necessity.” I say this because I see people performing poorly (wasteful,
inconsiderate, uncreative…), and draw the conclusion that we are not demanding
these values (conservation, consideration, creativity…) from them. This is an
argument against predominant forms of assessment, and a call to “look closely”
at how we can support the development of skills our students need in the 21st
century.
We demand something from our children, and I agree that “[g]iven
the demands of necessity, they do well what has to be done…” perhaps too well.
Using mathematics as an example, students in 8th grade honors
geometry (“High Achievers”) who took Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative’s
Mathematics Assessment Collaborative’s (MAC) performance assessment exam in
2012 performed well on standardized multiple choice tests (96.1% CST at or
above Proficient), but poorly on free response questions (45.6% MAC above
proficient) http://youtu.be/MOSS04seBF8?t=57s.
In 2nd grade, 76% of the students were scoring above proficient in
both the MAC and CST exams, but over time students were trained to perform well
on the only measured outcome, the multiple choice questions. So much so that by 8th grade, only 45.6% of our high achievers perform proficiently on critical thinking tasks.
We attempt to condense the learned experiences of children
onto a ballot used to measure student growth. I see a parallel between
standardized tests and the way Ray and Jason speak of 20th century
social sciences’ objectivity, “Even personal developments and events − even
desire − get described and managed as if intelligible to a cold and calculating
eye that looks on activities not as they are performed, but by their symptoms −
their droppings − lined up in patterns only after they have run their course.” (p. 2) And I believe that we can do a
better job, with assessment that gets at what William James recommended in
1897, “’a more radical empiricism’ that seeks things in the full variety of
their connections in experience” (p. 3)
When I drive alone, I usually make good lane change and turn
decisions. But I always warn my passengers, that when other people are in the
car I rely on the shared knowledge to direct us to our location. This often
leads to missed streets and U-turns. I can’t control the huge shift in my
personality between an empty vehicle and the “ones-with-others” vessel. But I
know the latter is more difficult to manage, and is closer to the stuff of
human interaction. The authors claim, “[A]
natural history analysis examines organisms and environments interwoven
in real time in situations consequential to their participants and beyond.” (p 2) Ray and Jason’s goal in using a
natural history approach is also what I see as the window through which we can
accurately measure learning: “[I]t is ‘not the point of view of one toward the
other’ that we seek, but ‘the very processing itself of the ones-with-others.’”
(p 3)
How do we assess that?
Quotes:
Test Data:
David Foster. (2012) Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative. http://www.svmimac.org/
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