Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track

2. The Classroom Environment

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

—Henry David Thoreau

Testing

In the world outside of classrooms, the “real world,” examinations are seldom used to determine the competence of people. Employees are usually evaluated by how well they perform on their jobs. In the real world, ability to use what is known in dealing with real situations is the way people should be and usually are evaluated, not by how much of what they are told they can regurgitate.

Schools at every level attempt to determine, if not measure, how much students have learned by use of examinations, ...