Beyond the Numbers Game in Education

Something very important is about to happen in the educational establishment. Enlightened teachers and administrators are protesting the current government focus on measuring and testing as the sole basis for assessing learning. They understand that real learning is more complicated than scoring on standardized tests with their principal measurement of short term memory and right answer skills while overlooking evidence of higher order learning and thinking qualities in individual students.

Successful teachers know that quality learning, which depends upon connecting the learner in some realistic way to the lesson, is a critical piece of the teaching process. Qualitative factors of learning like spirit, expectations, self-esteem, confidence, and self-expression have long been recognized features of effective teaching by many teachers. The current government pressure on educators for assessment of learning, based essentially on repeated standardized testing of students, is raising voices of protest among serious educators. I want to add my voice to their protest in the hope that official centers of education will begin to act more upon the understanding that what is not countable really counts in the educational experience and that accounting for the uncountable is an educational obligation.

Philosophers and educationists have been doing their best to bring about a better balance in education between quantitative thinking and qualitative thinking in the way we teach and learn. A long time ago William Blake gave us the theory of “The Doors of Perception.” Some years later Fantini and Weinstein made the case for a balance between symbol-based learning and experience-based learning in their theory of the “Cone of Experience.” John P. Guilford contributed his comprehensive theory in his “Model of the Structure of Intellect” that gave us a window into the understanding of intellectual levels and how to recognize and cultivate complex thinking that includes equal parts of quantitative and qualitative thought. He gave us a road map for understanding that it’s not about a number that tells us “How smart are you”? It’s a way of understanding “How are YOU smart”?

Then came the genius of Dr. E. Paul Torrance who labored for fifty years to produce and teach the understanding of the special qualities of thought that prepare the mind to make maximum use of its potential for qualitative and especially creative thinking. His legacy continues to lead the world in the educational breakthrough for a balance between the dependence on counting and measuring and the qualitative factors that define the individual creative thinking aptitudes present in everyone. The Torrance® Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) are of increasing attention as we continue to look for answers to the overriding problems of the Achievement Gap in test scores of students of different ethnicities and the alarming school dropout rate.

The Torrance message of the nature and nurture of creative potential in education begun during his seven years of leadership at the University of Minnesota, producing a vast following of students and colleagues that reached worldwide and continues its commitment to the Torrance Legacy. Official University response was based on traditions of standardized educational practices and quantitative research with no perception of the individual qualitative factors that influence thought and learning. With little or no support from the academic centers, the Torrance leadership continues to serve the dedicated and enlightened educational community without acknowledgment from official academia, and the government continues its standardized testing and retesting, comparing and punishing with little or no change in curriculum and instruction. A recent statement by a retired member of the Minnesota Office of Education reflects the attitude of many educational power centers when confronted with a new idea for improved education. “Many of the Socialists dropped out once they were through pushing their agenda. But just think what we would have missed without these interesting people.” The belittling nature of this statement is a clue to the kind of dismissal that traditional authority often offers to new ideas and educational practices; it testifies to the reason the educational system continues to fail so many students and all of society.

Now add the arrival on the scene of a popular best seller that is bringing the message of differences and possibilities of human thought to public attention. “A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Daniel Pink is expanding the studies of human differences in thinking processes to apply across the broad sweep of human society and its evolving picture. His argument for a balance between right- and left-brain dominance applies directly to teaching and learning principles and is reaching the public mind for demanding attention to the failure of traditional educational practices.

Bee Bleedorn, Ph.D.