Standardized Testing Isn’t Totally Useless, but It Does Miss the Point | Scott Barry Kaufman
- 6 years ago
Standardized testing is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. It's not totally useless, but it does misunderstand the situation. The Imagination Institute's Scott Barry Kaufman suggests a more three-dimensional search for intelligence. Kaufman is co-author of "Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind" (http://goo.gl/HtqT5t).
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Transcript - The idea of what we should be testing is a very hotly debated because there’s a certain objectivity that we think we have once we standardize things. We give the same test to everyone. And there is some truth to that that the more you standardize a test the more you kind of give everyone the same opportunity to perform on that test. So there is some argument to be made towards standardization. But we don’t have standardized minds. I mean no one has a standardized mind. There’s no such thing as an average mind. So every one of us, every unique individual is a dynamic system of not just cognitive processes but motivational processes, dreams, desires. I formulated a theory and I called it the theory of personal intelligence because I argued I wanted to shift our focus of analysis from taking one aspect that we are saying this is the measure of intelligence whether it’s a standardized test or whether it’s an IQ test. We say well we’ve decided as a society that’s our measure of intelligence. And then we compare everyone to each other on that one metric.
I wanted to move it to a personal level and recognize that well within a person every single one of us has a combination of traits and we can compensate for lower levels of one trait with higher levels of another trait. For instance we can compensate with lower levels of IQ with grit or with perseverance. So we’re capable of mixing and matching our own unique profile of characteristics in such really fascinating exciting ways that make us who we are. That’s what makes us a whole person. So when it comes to testing I’m not necessarily against testing and not necessarily against using standardized tests as a way of measuring learning outcomes. But as a way of measuring human potential I’m not down with that. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/bxVVxP.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/scott-barry-kaufman-on-standardized-testing
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - The idea of what we should be testing is a very hotly debated because there’s a certain objectivity that we think we have once we standardize things. We give the same test to everyone. And there is some truth to that that the more you standardize a test the more you kind of give everyone the same opportunity to perform on that test. So there is some argument to be made towards standardization. But we don’t have standardized minds. I mean no one has a standardized mind. There’s no such thing as an average mind. So every one of us, every unique individual is a dynamic system of not just cognitive processes but motivational processes, dreams, desires. I formulated a theory and I called it the theory of personal intelligence because I argued I wanted to shift our focus of analysis from taking one aspect that we are saying this is the measure of intelligence whether it’s a standardized test or whether it’s an IQ test. We say well we’ve decided as a society that’s our measure of intelligence. And then we compare everyone to each other on that one metric.
I wanted to move it to a personal level and recognize that well within a person every single one of us has a combination of traits and we can compensate for lower levels of one trait with higher levels of another trait. For instance we can compensate with lower levels of IQ with grit or with perseverance. So we’re capable of mixing and matching our own unique profile of characteristics in such really fascinating exciting ways that make us who we are. That’s what makes us a whole person. So when it comes to testing I’m not necessarily against testing and not necessarily against using standardized tests as a way of measuring learning outcomes. But as a way of measuring human potential I’m not down with that. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/bxVVxP.