Chapter 13 - Planning tomorrow's schools

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Planning tomorrow's schools	455

   In specific content courses, we believe the great need is for integration: to link art with science and all other subjects; to integrate all studies into more global understanding, so that Russian or French language training, or Chinese or Italian cooking, becomes linked with an understanding of others' cultures. In this way, as Mt. Edgecumbe, Freyberg and John Eliot schools have proven in practice, the world emerges as an interactive whole.

9. Change the assessment system
 
   It would take another book, or a large part of a book, to report on worldwide moves to gain better educational assessment systems. In a summary of key principles for school reform, these to us are the main points:
   Too much traditional teaching and too much traditional testing have been directed to only two segments of overall intelligence.
   Most people who have emerged successfully through the school system have been strong in those two "intelligences". These have gone on to become the arbiters of future teaching and testing methods.
   Just as new learning methods should involve the whole person, so should assessment methods.
   The search for excellence is a justifiable goal, in personal life, school and business - and much of our present schooling is aimed at "success" rates that fall far short of excellence.
   Pencil-and-paper test assignments test only a very small part of anyone's ability in almost any subject, except perhaps for mental mathematics or handwriting.
   In a world where self-management will be required of all, continuing self-assessment is needed - another reason that confidence-building should include the confidence to continually assess one's own improvement.
   Excellence will often come from joint efforts with others, so peer-assessment should be encouraged. In fact, it can often be linked with self-assessment: evaluating yourself, then discussing that evaluation with the people you work with.
   It is one of the great truisms that we all learn from our mistakes - and a positive attitude towards mistakes and risk-taking is a positive part of growth: seeing mistakes as steps toward excellence. No examination

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