About dogs, kids and standardized tests

Can we compare the kids we meet in our class room with dogs? Are we trainers or educators?
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Jason Flom has posted a highly peculiar metaphor at Ecology of Education. He has been on vacation to Scotland and has admired the remarkable skills of the Border Collie.
This leads him into thinking about a crucial dilemma in education. Shouldn't we accept that some children are inept at maths or science, or history?

It isn’t that many different breeds can’t be taught to herd, lead high-altitude rescue efforts, or kill foxes. They can. It’s just that teaching all dogs to do things which one particular breed can do better than any other doesn’t make much sense.
We accept the reasonableness of that argument for dogs. We reject it for kids.

His observation of dogs shepherding in the Scottish highlands triggers Jason Flom into rejecting standardised tests.

Think a promising trumpet player shouldn’t be kept out of the school orchestra or pushed out on the street because he can’t remember the date of the Boxer Rebellion?

This is a lousy metaphor. It is based on poor ethology. It results in detrimental ethics.

I have had a happy dog for sixteen years

Dogs are bred to demonstrate predictable behaviour to meet to their master's wishes. Being descendants from wolves, domesticated by mankind, they love to follow the leader of their pack, which happens to be a human being. That's why dogs are eager to show their innate qualities and don' t need to overcome their flaws. Dogs are not aware of their flaws. Don't teach your dog to overcome his dependency, it will result in a mean companion. You can train your dog to do tricks based on his natural behaviour, retrieve a stick and so on. That's all.

There is a difference between training and education

Humans are educated to enable creative versatile behaviour with which they can react to unpredictable circumstances independently and thereby pursue their personal happiness and shore up the common good of their tribe. They may heed the chief's stance, but only if it makes sense.
That's why they need a broad knowledge and understanding even in those fields in which they are not that talented. They need to learn a lot of things. Being able to learn a lot of things is the quintessential talent of our species. Homo sapiens is a far better learner than Canis lupus familiaris.

You do not own your classroom, you owe it to the world at large.

Secondary education must guarantee that everyone can participate in society and contribute to the survival of the species. That's why everyone has to attain a basic curriculum. On top of that everyone has to develop his natural talents for making a living as an expert, as a plumber, a rocket scientist or as a trumpet player. We need all those special skills and talents.
But we definitely need the excellent trumpet player to have also an educated opinion on matters of science: he has to vote on legislation which deals with environmental issues, for example. We don't want daft voters, do we? We don't want to treat musical talents like dogs who are rewarded with a cookie or hug when showing their tricks on request of the master, do we? We don't want the plumber to be invoked as a politician's running gag “Joe the Plumber,” do we?

No education without testing

Standardised testing guarantees that students push themselves to pass muster in a broad range of subjects, not only in their favourite activity. Without standards they would be too lazy and bail out. The trumpet player might get his applause but the world will collapse

I don't get it

I do not understand my fellow teachers from The United States. I only ran into this contentious issue while blogging. I am ignorant about “No Child Left Behind” or “The Common Core Standards.” I am a humble teacher from The Netherlands, who has been dogged for years and years by the standards of our national exams. But looking at international comparison of efficacy of education, I can only conclude that The Netherlands rank perennially in the top ten, if not the top five, while the United States lag way behind. Albeit, we, Dutch teachers, we are embarrassed, because we used to be in the top three. Apparently we have a problem and we are enviously looking at Finland: number one. Their secondary school concludes also with a nationally graded matriculation examination, devised in the ninetenteenth century, just like our national exams. They keep their exams up like we do.

Dear fellow teachers from The States: heed your chief's caution: you need standardised tests. You need national exams. It makes sense!

By the way

It goes without saying that any promising trumpet player who can memorise an intricate musical pattern is capable of remembering the date of the Boxer Rebellion. If he is too lazy to work at it, then just send him on the streets to busk. He may earn his bread and butter while other people decide on his future.

The Pack

"While it is true that animals are not humans, it is equally true that humans are animals"
Frans de Waal

Just out of the den

In young adolescents the veneer of civilisation is extremely thin. They are urged by bodily changes towards dangerous adventures. Actually they are not aware of risks at all. Their inner clock is running wild, they act on the spur of the moment. Their natural habitat has recently been changed from the family at home in which their place was well defined into the peer group in which they constantly have to fight for their place in the pecking order.

I believe order in the class room should be dealt with on a down to earth level. It is not about rules, decency, tests and marks, mobile phones, expletives or whatever you can come up with to describe what happens in the classroom on the level of human behaviour. Order in the class room is about the pack.

My Habitat

I work in most fortunate conditions. My school is embedded in a rural environment in which strong family bonds still exist. Parents are ashamed when the school invites them for a showdown. The school is very well organised, there is a clear behaviour policy. Teachers are adequately supported by the management in case of trouble. Young teachers are systematically coached by experienced colleagues.

Even in this best of all worlds it happens once in a while that a class runs amok. Suddenly a group of neat young kids finds themselves in a situation in which they cruelly destroy the teacher's ego in a concerted effort. It happened in a tutor group of mine a couple of years ago, they crushed a cover teacher for Latin. It took only one lesson, the colleague was in tears. Individually all those amiable gifted children expressed afterwards that they were embarrassed and utterly ashamed of themselves. It just started, and then they could not stop it any more. They had turned into a pack of wolves.

Theoretical ruminations

Now what branch of science describes this type of behaviour best? I take it to be ethology. Especially the studies by Frans de Waal shed light on the order in the class room. De Waal's work describes the order in groups of chimpanzees as an intricate pattern of political bonds maintained meticulously by the alpha-male and his allies within the group.

What had happened in my tutor class was that the newly appointed cover teacher failed to show plain alpha-person signs in his first lesson, which confused the class so much as to follow their own pecking order. The queen bee of the girls took the lead. She manipulated the complete group into destructive behaviour, just for the fun of it, and to establish her reign. One of the creative rumbustious boys was ushered into the role of hatchet man and he found out what really would be extremely offensive against this weak adult. So the seat of the teacher was covered with maggots collected during an experiment in biology class the hour before. It clearly was a deliberately contrived act by the whole group. Only one student objected, but she was forced to comply with the others.

The event reminds me of De Waal's description of a bunch of young male chimpanzees that foray into the territory of an other group to find themselves some one to kill. A film on Youtube depicts such a gruesome event

Are you the alpha-person?

So order in the class room is about only one issue: are you as a teacher the alpha-person in the class room, or are you not? This is not a simplification, it makes it more complicated.

For example: young teachers often have a mindset which does not allow them to take command of the group. They prefer co-operative amiable behaviour. They are just nice guys or girls. They have never been a leader anywhere. But a teacher must aspire leadership to become the alpha-person in the class room.

Next to that it is not enough just to act bullishly. Bullish teachers challenge bullish students, you don't want to fight every minute in all lessons, do you. Just your appearance in the class room should suffice to calm down the young rebels. De Waal's observations show that the alpha-person is a master in political bonding. He has a deep knowledge of all the relations in the group, and knows perfectly when to bully a young rascal, when to show affection, and he knows how to dole out favours to win loyalty.

The Perfect Class Room

So my metaphor for the perfect class room is a group of monkeys on the rock. Everyone is relaxed and enjoys the day, grooming and flea-picking, communicating and playing. The old monkey on top of the rock sometimes is teased by the youngsters. They pull his leg for fun, not too seriously, as they know that when he comes down, hell breaks loose. He seems to be dozing. But he knows what's going on down there, all the time. He sees to that. He must, if he loses control, they will tear him apart.

References

Images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canis_lupus_pack_surrounding_Bison.jpg

http://budongo.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/fsuchimps.jpg

Frans de Waal's quote: Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers, How Morality Evolved;Princeton University Press, 2006, Appendix A pg 65.