Why is assessment and measurement so important in public education? I would like to blame No Child Left Behind, but it goes farther back than 2001. I point at the Nation at Risk study of 1983 when federal alarm bells told us that education outcomes in the United States were decreasing, and our students lagged children in other nations in the academics. In the 1980s and continuing today, we are besotted with comparative data and national flagellation over test scores. For almost 40 years assessed measurement has been a painful constant in public education. But what happened to the immeasurable? In our current world full of cynicism and small-mindedness and alternative truths, why don’t we teach kindness and generosity and politeness to our children? If George W indeed was a compassionate conservative, might he have signed an act prescribing amiability, graciousness, and kindness as well as mandates for improved reading and mathematics? Maybe, but who votes for kindness when national honor is at stake!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nation_at_Risk
https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003020.pdf
Measurement drives improvement and improvement drives us.
The thread of efficiency management runs through our national culture. Frank Gilbreth, role model for the father figure in the movie Cheaper by the Dozen, led the time and motion studies that fueled the craze for systems and procedures in industry. Efficiency was doing things faster and with fewer independent actions. Gilbreth preached that there “always is a better way to do things”. His tools were a stopwatch and record sheet, and he applied it to all forms of everyday life. How long did it take to brush your teeth this morning and how many times did the brush touch each tooth in order to create a daily cleaning?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bunker_Gilbreth
The efficiency movement gave educators the Carnegie Unit. Andrew Carnegie was a proponent of Gilbreth’s work and his foundation collaborated with Harvard University to establish that one (1) academic credit equalled 120 hours of study in one subject, or a class that met five days each week for 50 minutes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Unit_and_Student_Hour
The rabbit hole of measurement deepens. Efficiency studies lead us to measure how well a child learns from one credit of instruction and we assign a letter grade to that measure. At the child level, this creates grade point averages and a ranking of all children by their gpa. At the school level it creates school report cards using statewide or national assessments as the measurement. Children and schools unkindly become their statistical numbers.
Are Competition and Score Cards at Odds with Kindness?
Infants and pre-school children appear to be innately kind. We see their kindness in the way they act. They smile at each other. They readily share toys and cookies among themselves. They scoot over to make room so another child to join their group. They show concern when one is crying or upset. Given a choice, they gather rather than spread out. Our youngest selves understand and value their common good.
Over time many children lose their innate kindness. It is suborned by competitive activities, even learning to read, write and do arithmetic, where children who learn faster are rewarded and recognized. As soon as adults begin to value and teach specific activities, those activities become important to young children. And as adults value selected activities they also value children who do well in those activities. Competition and self-interest are not kind to kindness. We do more to unteach kindness than we do to teach it.
A Kindness Score.
Gilbreth could not put a stopwatch or measuring stick to kindness. Ambiguity is the enemy of measurement. We crap out on measuring kindness because there is no single, agreed upon definition of what kindness is. The closest we get to measuring kindness is the Kindness Score. This is the number of truly kind acts a person performs in one day divided by the number of unkind acts + the number of artificial or forced acts that resemble kindness. This ratio is a Kindness Score. Most people discover their Kindness Score is a fraction, meaning they perform more unkind and artificially kind acts in a day than kind acts.
Here is a challenge. Calculate your Kindness Score for one week. Are you a whole number or a fraction? How happy are you with your kindness quotient?
We know kindness when see it.
The other President Bush asked for a “kinder and gentler nation” and believed that we can assist others to be kind with our own acts of kindness. President Bush also spoke of “a thousand points of light” and the use of exemplary examples that can help is to be better than we are.
Our local school sets a very good example. The HS Peer Leaders and PBIS committee recommends children every week who are “caught being kind”. A “kind” student’s picture and story are publicized in school and spotlighted on its web site. While schools role model children with high grade points and athletes on winning teams and students who go to state competitions, role modeling kind children sets another example of exemplary performances in school and life.
Of interest, kindness is observed and recognized for what it is. Kindness is not the same act by all children but a wide variety of acts by a great number of children.
Kindness as implicit lessons.
Immediately there is the argument that schools suffer from too many mandates already. As an immeasurable subject, kindness also lacks a concrete curriculum. Instead of teaching kindness, schools can contribute to the greater good will of their communities by role modeling kind and caring cultures. Schools can raise awareness and a valuing of kindness by just talking about and recognizing kind people and their acts. There are many implicit lessons in school that are not explicitly taught.
Paraphrasing Forrest Gump, “Kindness is as kindness does”.