Every morning in Africa awakes a lion, knowing that he will have to run, in order to eat. Every morning in Africa awakes a gazelle, knowing that she will have to run in order to survive. It does not matter which one you are, as long as you know how to run ¨Says an old proverb. However, I believe that it does matter which one you are. You are the hunter or the hunted. So, the question is, what makes the difference? What makes us be who we are? Are we lions or gazelles? The difference lies on the way we think. We could just think that we are part of a system in which someone, inevitably, will have to be ran after, and that it is simply our social role. Or, we could believe that there is no need for things to be that way. We are taught that place we belong to since primary school. We are defenseless gazelles, victims of wicked lions, who grade us, and teach us futile things, Fortunately, there are those lions who treat us as equals and help us decide what we want to be. There lies the difference between traditional and progressive education.
Traditional education makes us accept our fate. You just need to keep a low profile, your head down, and swallow your books in order to ¨succeed¨. Traditional educational education makes only gazelles, not able to think for themselves. This situation is reflected in the ways of assessment: written exams, that do not really test our understanding, but our memory therefore, these examinations are not reliable for several reasons. First of all, there is no proof that the student actually comprehends, since traditional evaluations, only show the student’s capacity for storing facts without previous analysis. In addition, it does not test the progress of the scholar, but its current effort.
Furthermore, we have to take into account those students who under a stressful situation get extremely nervous, and whose minds go blank at the time of sitting for an exam. Nevertheless, this does not mean that they have not learned, it provides that these sorts of examinations cannot really test those students who have difficulties in working under pressure.
Another problem could be the teacher itself. Some teachers do not have the intention of getting up to date with pedagogical methods and prefer to carry on with archaic ways, proved not to work.
On the other hand, progressive education brings to the table a whole new concept of what education should be like. It offers many instances in which students can be evaluated, and in this way, a more accurate notion of what the student is like, is provided to the educator. For instance oral work, participation in class and general understanding grading. These aspects involve continuos assessment, and provide the overall progress made by the student.
As for the teachers, they should also be under constant evaluation. Schools should make sure that they are up to date with the latest pedagogical methods. To accomplish this institutions should dictate compulsory course to keep teachers updated with the didactic ways of teaching, what is more, schools ought to have to hire young teachers that, in spite of their inexperience, are aware and well informed about the best ways of evaluation. It should also be required from teachers to organize a field trip at least once a term. In this way, student would get a better idea of what the real world is like and have experiences outside the classroom.
It is evident that traditional education evaluations are inaccurate, unreliable and pointless. Students need guidance and help, of course, but they also need to build their own path. Scholars are like tots. Just as a one-year-old leans on his parent’s hands to learn to walk, a student leans on his teacher’s knowledge to develop his own critical thinking.