Attitude is Everything, Chu Hsi Tells Texas How to Succeed with TAKS

The state of Texas uses a test called TAKS, Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, to check the progress of its students. Some schools and some segments within schools have been failing consistently for years. Some people now want to abandon the TAKS test rather than fix the underlying problem.

One such person is Texas State Senator Florence Shapiro. On page 5 of her last newsletter of 2006, under the section on student assesments, she talks about beginning to abandon the TAKS test. She wants to use end of course exams, but does not tell you that end of course exams were used before the TAAS tests, which preceded the TAKS. In other words, she wants to return to the failed system that led to the TAAS and TAKS tests in the first place.

There are many students in Texas that fail the TAKS because they do not want to pass it. They do not care. No matter what test you give them, no matter what curriculum you use, no matter how many teachers or administrators you fire, you cannot force students to learn who do not want to learn. This is the most stubborn problem in education.

Changing the test again is just a way to avoid the problem and perpetuate failure. What can we do? One approach is too see what one of the most important educators in history had to say. Chu Hsi lived in China from 1130 to 1200 AD. Here is what he said about a student's attitude:

"Students must firmly establish their wills, the desire to learn....The students' great failing is their wills are incapable of pressing on....Where the mind is headed is what is meant by will....the mind must have the will to learn if the student is ever to advance."

We must address the attitudes of failing students if we are to make continuing progress in education. Sometimes a student's bad attitude is a reflection of bad attitudes from the parents, so parental support is also important to improving student performance. This is the hardest problem within education, but we will never succeed unless we tackle it.

Abandoning the TAKS test is a huge mistake, even if it is done incrementally by dropping it first in the high schools. No test, no curriculum, no staff changes can compensate for an attitude that despises education.

Robert

ps:
The quote I gave from Chu Hsi comes from page 104 of "Learning to be a Sage" by Chu Hsi, translated by Daniel K. Gardner