Playing your instrument..

"Your Destiny is the level where you will play your time. You might not change your instrument, but how well to play is entirely in your hands."
(Elif Shafak, Forty Rules of Love)

Misleading Myth about education!

One of the most dangerous and misleading myths that still endures in the field of education is the idea that tests used to measure and compare students to one another are scientifically objective. They are not, in my opinion, absolutely not. 

Young people are not inert rocks or chemicals in a test tube, and they are not machines. They are curious, creative and continuously changing living beings. As such, the use of high-stakes testing to sort and compare children with one another can be very misleading and potentially destructive. 

That doesn't mean that assessments play no role in education, they most definitely do. What experienced teachers understand is that whenever you provide a child with an assessment on their abilities you must be very careful about it. 

Well designed assessments are given to help students become aware of their weaknesses, so that they can improve in those areas. 

This is how the best teachers and coaches motivate and inspire their students. They are constantly giving the learner feedback on little details of their progress, with the shared goal of helping them improve their skills and abilities, to master what they are learning. 

Assessment of learning is key, but the subjective component is always in the forefront of the teacher's mind. Feedback given in this way promotes growth, motivation and greater learning. It is a key component of the student/teacher relationship, grounded in trust, respect and an awareness of the learner's potential.

The care, flexibility and personal support the teacher demonstrates is a crucial component of the process. This is why teaching is more an art form then a science, as is also true of learning. 

Every child is different, with different strengths, weaknesses, motivations, learning styles and interests. If you use standardized test results to compare them to one another the effect is to decrease motivation for those who fall into the bottom of your assessment basket. 

The result is that schooling becomes "miseducative" for far too many children, as John Dewey described it.

~Christopher
The Art of Learning

a single word can brighten the face..

A single word can brighten the face
of one who knows the value of words.
Ripened in silence, a single word
acquires a great energy for work.
War is cut short by a word,
and a word heals the wounds,
and there's a word that changes
poison into butter and honey.

{Yunus Emre}

Beautiful words describing the character of a Sufi..

Beauty for an artist vs. a Scientist

“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I [disagree]. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.

At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimetre; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes.

The fact that the colours in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the colour. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”

~ Richard P. Feynman ~
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1965