Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

I  recently took an on-line quiz that simulated the hit TV game show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. Over five million American households are said to tune in each week to watch the Fox game show where adult contestants, with help from five actual fifth graders, try to answer questions drawn from grades 1-5 textbooks. According to the president of Fox Entertainment, while most other quiz shows on television typically measure how smart you are, their show measures how dumb you are instead. Just in case ... I took the quiz while no one was around. I ended up theoretically winning $500,000, which probably means that I’m indeed smarter than most American 10-year-olds. The computer suggested that it was something to feel good (or relieved) about except that I really wish that the half a million dollars was for real.

I personally find the show kinda cute. Critics, however, charge that it goes to show what is wrong with the educational system. They claim that it reflects the current state of schools where children are forced to memorize tons of irrelevant information, including useless facts like the names of all five Great Lakes or who invented peanut butter.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the preoccupation with facts and figures is what I call modern society’s (overly) “testing culture.” Go to any of the big schools and look across the road. You will find rows upon rows of tutorial schools. Look also at how many review centers have cropped up. We simply want to test everyone and everything all the time. Even some kindergartens reportedly now have quizzes and homework! And if by some misfortune children fail any of these tests, it’s thunder, lighting, floods, and earthquakes. Teachers get reprimanded. Parents get panicky. And the children, well, the children get stressed. I was recently in a fast-food restaurant when I noticed a mother testing her son over lunch in the table next to ours. The boy must have been only seven or eight years old. The mother was using what looked like flash cards and diagrams as if they were part of the value meal together with the fries, burger, and soda. After his “lunch exam,” the boy suddenly started smooching with his dwarf-like yaya — I kid you not! It was surreal and I almost choked on my food. The mother looked on helplessly and half-heartedly tried to scold him.

In the US, testing has become life-and-death situations for many public elementary and high schools since the results of the federally mandated testing, which starts as early as second grade, directly impact their funding. As a result, the tests sometimes now become the main drivers of curriculum and instruction (“teaching to the test”). With its new “No Child Left Behind” policy, the focus in the US has shifted heavily to reading, writing, and math. It has led to a decreased focus on the arts, social studies, history, civics, literature, and even physical education. All these developments in the US have strongly influenced Philippine education as well.

The question, however, remains: Are we truly assessing if and how our children are learning? Almost all of our tests nowadays are objectively designed just like those in the game shows. This means multiple choice, true or false, matching, enumeration, etc. There is a practical reason for this approach — these kinds of objective tests are much easier to administer and grade. By its very nature, however, it focuses primarily on factual recall and promotes only simple application of knowledge. Worse, the tests are typically given in a very competitive atmosphere which unduly stresses many children.

In a recent meeting between my daughter‘s grade four teacher and the parents in her class, we had a lively discussion on testing as it pertained to reading and writing. The teacher said that their approach is to focus on comprehension first before things like grammar, punctuation, and spelling. She said that it’s relatively easy to master these skills even in the later grades. What she really tries to teach first is subject appreciation. Thus, for their “Man and Animal” block, which lasted for about a month, they talked endlessly about horses, fishes, and other animals. She told them stories, they visited farms, the children drew the animals, and so on and so forth. Later on, she told them to write poems about the animals. While she also corrected their grammar and spelling, they were not done as a test but as part of the creative process of writing a poem. I got to read some of the poems and was struck by the children’s observations and reflections. More than any test, they gave me much greater confidence that they are indeed learning. Here are three examples of the students’ works.

If I were a fish

I would not want to be kept

In a fishbowl as a pet

I would want to be set free

Swimming happily in the sea

If I were a fish

Please don’t catch me and cook me and serve me in a dish

If I were a horse

I’d want to walk

Just to listen to the wind talk

If I were to trot in a fog

I’d rather jump over a log

When I canter I feel nothing in my mind

And I feel just fine

When I gallop it’s like flying off the ground

And I think I’ll lose a pound

Here comes a horse galloping so fast and swift

But when it walks, his legs hardly lift

When it canters, bouncing up and down

He looks just as jolly as a little clown

When his work is finally done

He trots home before the setting of the sun

The grade four kids who wrote the poems above likely can neither define the word “hyperbole” yet nor determine whether or not “after” is an adverb, conjunction or preposition. Nor do they know that the spelling of the name of any breed of long-bodied and short-legged dogs of German origin is d-a-c-h-s-h-u-n-d. They eventually will but not yet. You tell me though, are you smarter than these fourth graders?

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E-mail your reactions to kindergartendad@yahoo.com.