Teaching like Socrates: A Little History behind S.T.

The biggest problem with standardized testing is that it’s completely product based. There is only one answer to every question. A question that has multiple interpretations or answers does not exist in the limited world of standardized testing. Preparing a student for these tests limits his creativity, and sends the message that he doesn’t need creativity to be successful in life. It feels like society is turning schools into little factories (grade schools) which spits students out into big factories (universities) and ultimately creates millions of clones who think and act the exact same way.

I’m not implying that every aspect of school is product-based. We have all had rare classes where we were able to express ourselves through discussion. We have all had classes that didn’t require us to make and learn hundreds of flashcards. In my experience, it was the experience-based classroom settings which really stuck with me throughout the subsequent years of school.

While surfing through dozens of articles related to different aspects of standardized testing, I came across one from the Washington Post which addressed current teaching methods with the ones first developed by Socrates in ancient Greece. I didn’t even know Socrates was a teacher. Today, he would probably frown upon the current use of standardized testing. It turns out that his teaching methods have had a great deal of impact on the way students have been taught throughout history. For Socrates, the ideal teaching process was dialogue based, rather then product based.

“In ancient times, Socrates tested his students through conversations. Answers were not scored as right or wrong. They just led to more dialogue. Many intellectual elites in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. cared more about finding the path to higher knowledge than producing a correct response. To them, accuracy was for shopkeepers… Critics say standardized testing has robbed schools of the creative clash of intellects that make Plato’s dialogues still absorbing. “There is a growing technology of testing that permits us now to do in nanoseconds things that we shouldn’t be doing at all,” said educational psychologist Gerald W. Bracey, research columnist for the Phi Delta Kappan education journal. “

Standardized testing began with simple essay exams, which were often sufficient until the 20^th century arrived. However, test distributors began looking for shortcuts in order to test in more sufficiently in different areas. Therefore in 1914 the first multiple choice tests arrived. Testers claimed that multiple choice tests evaluate individuals on their rate of learning rather then immediate knowledge. However, I think it is simply an opportunity for testers to evaluate individuals in a quicker fashion. Technology is rapidly making the nation increasingly lazy.

“Historians call the rise of testing an inevitable outgrowth of expanding technology. As goods and services are delivered with greater speed and in higher quantity and quality, education has been forced to pick up the pace.”

When thinking about the purpose of standardized testing, I often find myself wondering exactly when surface knowledge became more important then depth. I found that the SAT became the first big standardized test in the 1940s, and it has stuck with society ever sense, and even caused school districts to develop an array of standardized tests which students are now required to take.

“Many educators who value depth and rigor lament what followed. In 1926, the multiple-choice SAT was introduced as a much faster way of testing college applicants. On Dec. 7, 1941, several members of the board, during a previously scheduled lunch, decided that the outbreak of world war would require faster decisions and less leisurely testing. They eventually canceled the board’s old exam format. The SAT ruled.

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