Testing in Ability and Intelligience

This weeks blog focused on the testing children and the assessments that are being used to show a child's intelligence. Teachers today in the United States have more focus today on assessing children's intelligence more than ever. The assessments that children need to get tested on, I believe is too much and takes up too much wasted time. Personally, I have never been a great test taker, but I know that my abilities and intelligence for most subject areas are just as good as someone who would ace a test. I believe schools focus more on assessment of testing than letting the children interact and learn what they really need to learn for life. How are children supposed to be creative and work together when all they do is sit in a chair and a desk and do multiple choice questions and essays the whole time? I do think testing should be done, especially to show their growth on a topic, but to focus all their attention to test they have to take is not right. Also, I believe repetition of information is useful for children especially if its information that they need to use in the future. There is so much for a teacher to teach and a child to learn, that it is hard for the information to sink in because before they know it they are being assessed in another subject. 


The country I chose to focus on with the educational system is Asia. The thought of assessment is new to Asia. Course requirements in Asia is based on their ability and what and how they have learned. In Asia, teachers use assessments of performance based assessments, self and peer assessments, teacher observations, portfolios, quizzes, and tests. Asia out of most countries is similar to the United States. Asia has many standardized assessments that they use to measure a students ability and intelligence. Some include SAT II, Early Language Learning Oral Performance Assessment and Lingua Folio. The resource at the end of the blog describes in detail what all the assessments test. 

When I think of intelligence, I don't think of it as a whole. I believe everyone has their own abilities of what they are good at and what they are bad at. I am particularly intelligent in sports and cooking. If you asked me how to build a shed, or house or anything, I would have no clue. If you asked me how to hit a softball or how to cook an omelet, I would know the answer right on the spot. Or if a child for example is really good at painting and drawing, but fail every math test he or she takes, this shows by assessment of what they know and what they are good at. Even thought testing shows these things, I don't believe they should measure their whole ability and intelligence on the subject. Children need to know and learn more information about real life situations and focus less on the things they will never use. For example, I took French in middle school and high school. I have to say I did good and got good grades. But I've been out of school for 8 years now and I haven't used French not once. Why do we have to take things and learn things that are never going to be used in our life in the future? 

Resources: 
Asia Society. "Assessment. http://asiasociety.org/education/chinese-language-initiatives/assessment  2013.

Stressors in life

This weeks blog asked to describe a stressor that affected either myself or someone I knew. I chose the stressor of poverty. Out of all the stressors I am grateful to say that none of these apply to me personally growing up. I did have one friend that grew up in poverty. She never had the nicest clothes    or material things but she was always a great friend to me. She was always moving to different houses whether it was to a housing apartment or to a family members home. She never had money to do certain things for school functions and my friend could often not participate and have the things that most of our class had. As a child, I never recognized that she was living with basically the clothes on her back and the shoes on her feet. I never treated her differently. I believe and still do believe that she was the same as me or anyone of her classmates. Her and I are still friends and now she is a manager at her work for five years now. She has had many hardships in her life because of poverty. She has worked very hard as an adult to make sure her kids don't have to live in the same issues as she did. 


Africa is the worlds poorest continent and every third African does not have enough food. ( Church, 2011) A main reason Africa is living in poverty is due to harsh environment conditions. A statistic shows that one in six African children die before the age of five. A main thing is hydration for these children. 43 percent of children in Africa do not have safe accessible drinking water. (Mm Brico, 2006) The difference between my friend and these African children is the fact that money was an issue for my friend to be provided her basic needs. While in Africa the main reason is due to the environment and the lack of resources.