Authenticity

I’ve enjoyed this textbook so far, but after reading this quote from Chapter 5, I want to high five Shelley Wong. “Because of our school system’s democratic façade, people think that every child has equal opportunity because the tests are supposed to be “objective.” In fact, there isn’t equal opportunity. These exams are both racially and class-biased. They are a more accurate measure of family income and parent education.” I couldn’t agree more with this. Throughout my entire education I still cannot understand why our government thinks the answer to our education system’s problems is standardized and IQ testing. No child can be measured and labeled by a number, especially not by an unauthentic one. This is important for all children regardless of their background or race, but for ELL’s it can have an even more negative effect. A culturally biased test leaves no chance for a child who has just been introduced to the mainstream culture to succeed. These are the children who answer a question “incorrectly” not because they don’t have the knowledge, but because they do not understand the cultural implications behind it. By using this type of standardized IQ testing, we are perhaps unintentionally segregating our students based on things other than their knowledge.
Another point that I am glad Wong made in this chapter is that the assimilation into American culture often fosters a rejection to a child’s native culture and language. In Branch5-2 this issue is evaluated on. As a bilingual major I identify with this sentiment. It is my job as a teacher to not only value home cultures and languages of my students, but to learn as much about them as I expect my students to learn in class. Bringing bilingual and bicultural methods into the classroom is a way to fight prejudice, jump-start critical thinking, and to create an environment where every child is accepted and valued. When children are exposed to different cultures and languages, a different type of learning occurs than does in a “mainstream” classroom. The students become the teachers, instruction is student- led and students have a lowered affective filter because they feel valued and safe. One way to ensure this is happening in your classroom is to make sure your methods are authentic. Literature, art, assessment, etc. all must be authentic in order to be effective.
If all of our classrooms looked like this, I do not believe we would need standardized or IQ testing. When we are authentically assessing our students, we as well as they will learn their strengths and weaknesses, but more so we as educators will realize that there is more to intelligence than we sometimes credit. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is a theory that can debate the authenticity of IQ testing. Our students education with be richer if they are a part of a culturally diverse environment. To do this, we have to go beyond “Heroes and Holidays”. I think the most important thing to remember is authenticity.