One of the tasks that lies before the classical Christian school is the arduous task of rediscovering what education actually is. And a good way to tell whether this is happening is by asking what we think a quiz really is.
But I see that I shall have to explain.
One unflattering definition of a lecture is “when knowledge is transferred from the notes of the teacher to the notes of the student, without passing through the minds of either.” This is obviously an extreme case, but it arises from a faulty idea of the lecture, and indeed of the nature of education itself.
Too often it is assumed that knowledge is contained within the decanter that we call the teacher, and the student is the empty glass. The lecture is the time of pouring, and then later, if the decanter wonders how much water got all over the floor and how much into the glass, he administers a quiz.
To change the metaphor, quizzes and tests are the times when the teacher checks the oil levels, using the test as the dipstick.
Behind this strange methodology is the even stranger assumption that knowledge comes in fungible units. You know, like three credits of sociology, and six credits of history—like three yards of wool, ten pounds of flour, and and six skeins of yarn.
But knowledge isn’t that kind of thing, and wisdom really isn’t. We are frequently the victims of an analogy created by our grading processes. But it must be granted that sometimes the analogy is a pretty good one.
If you gave the students a vocabulary test of one hundred Latin words, and one of the students missed thirteen of them, it would make some sort of poetic sense to write 87 at the top of his paper. What are you saying by this? You are saying that 87 is to 100 what the number of his correct answers was to the number of possible correct answers. And even if you would not go so far as to call it poetic, you at least think that it makes some kind of sense.
But change subjects now. Suppose it is an English class, and you tell the students to write three paragraphs of creative non-fiction, describing the most lurid sunset they ever saw. In the grip of our false views of knowledge, there are many teachers who wouldn’t really hesitate to write 87 on the top of one of those papers either, provided it was an 87ish paper. But what on earth do we mean by it? 87 is to 100 what this description was . . . to what? To the essay that the Archangel Gabriel would have written? What is the standard here?
We do this because when dispensing knowledge, or when evaluating whether knowledge has been successfully, we frequently act like we were stacking so many wooden blocks, or like we were laying a course of cinder blocks.
Compare all this to the work of a truly good teacher. An effective teacher is someone who provides inspiration, accountability, and knowledge, and in that order. Let’s consider each of these in turn.
Good teaching, in the first place, occurs when when a teacher loves God through loving his subject, in the presence of students, whom he also loves. Love is contagious, and consequently love is a carrier of much information. When a teacher is gripped by his subject, and he is doing this coram Deo, in the presence of God, seeking to introduce the students to this enrapturing topic, like say, organic chemistry, he is very likely teaching effectively. Enthusiasm is contagious, and when it is done right, even on those occasions when the student doesn’t “get it” yet, he is starting to wish that he did.
Personal confessions here. I am not a big Dickens fan. But I am a big Chesterton fan, and after I read his book on Dickens, guess what I wanted to read?
The second thing the good teacher provides is accountability. This element is particularly relevant in all great books programs. The great books themselves were written by great teachers, and the teacher’s job is to introduce them to the students. The quiz is simply a way of asking the students shook the great teacher’s hand, looking him straight in the eye. In a certain sense, there are elements of that conversation that the teacher is not privy to.
This is what I mean. Say a teacher assigned Pride and Prejudice to the students. Say also that the teacher, feeling impish, asked “what caused Elizabeth to fall in love with Mr. Collins?” The only purpose of such a question would be to ascertain whether or not the students did in fact read the book. This is not the central point of the book, not by a long shot, but anyone who had read the book would know that it was a trick question. The student who answered that it was Mr. Collins’ rapier wit is a student who fell into the trap.
But all the students who read the book would have gained thousands of things that the teacher knows nothing about. The teacher made the introduction, and made sure the introduction was complete. After that he lets Austen and the students be friends on their own.
The last element is the knowledge that the teacher has that he wishes the students would claim for their own. There are two kinds of knowledge here. There is knowledge how and knowledge that. A math teacher is going to working more in the realm of knowledge how. He puts numerous problems on the board, and works through them, showing the students how it is done. The problems, class to class, or year to year, are all different problems. But they are all the same kind of problem, admitting of the same kind of solution. This kind of teaching is like teaching someone to ride a bicycle.
For a history teacher, the fact that the American War for Independence ended with the Treaty of Paris is not going to change from year to year. He knows this and the students do not (yet) know. This part of teaching is the part that can devolve into a tedious lecture, as though the teacher had a job unloading pallets in a warehouse. That is not the way.
I have a much different view of testing after reading Joshua Gibbs' excellent little book, "Something They Will Not Forget", which helped me to appreciate the role of catechesis across all subjects.