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Are You As Smart As A Sight-Singing Fifth Grader?
By Arthur Hu
You have ten minutes to compose a piano concerto, and perform it on flute. A toy piano is under your seat.
People complained Washington State's WASL test for kids left out the arts. So now they've expanded their testing racket to classroom-based assessments for every subject. In music, "All Stars" asks fifth graders to sing solo while being videotaped reading sheet music. That's by sight WITHOUT hearing the tune.
"Zoo Tunes" then asks them to compose on a staff with Italian tempo and volume markings, and write how it relates to an animal.
Are our kids in danger of being displaced by composers from Russia or Filipina songbirds? Wolfgang freaking Mozart used a piano, and he never wrote essays for his symphonies.
Ann Renne Joseph at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction assured me that it's been psychometrically tested, piloted, passed and supported by tens of thousands of enthusiastic students and teachers. Before long, Asian Week writers will be required to pass mandatory assessments.
A gifted musician told me he could have passed this test ... in 10th grade. Do you know any kids or adults who can sight sing AND compose at any age? 5th grade instrument players are taught to read music, but many professional singers don't even read sheet music. A 5th grader is doing well if he or she can sing in a choir by ear. Professor Vilem Sokol, retired University of Washington professor told me that he couldn't think of even his most talented college music majors who could have passed such a test.
Marc Tucker's "Standards for Our schools" shows two 4th graders who can barely build a Pinewood Derby car teamed up "with a professional carpenter" to meet a high standard. They designed a bike trailer with plans and a parts list complete with cotter pins. A high school student engineers and welds an electric car from sheet metal and a donated electric motor. They are introducing algebra to third graders "because we're falling behind the Asians". One superintendent won an award for wanting to require passing college-level AP courses just to earn a high school diploma.
We used to teach kids what we knew, not push them into the great unknown. This smells like the planned production quotas that resulted in planned mass starvation in Russia and China. Do we really want a 1984-ish vision of the Supreme Asian Parent(TM) pushing for and tolerating only high performing children and workers? This is not the progressive vision of everyone successful at their own level. Are we really such a nation of total suckers no one will stand up to educrats and business interests and call Higher Standards from Hell the nonsense that it is?
You can look at our brave our new assessments.
Send your comments to AnneRenne Joseph is at annrene.joseph@k12.wa.us
— Arthur Hu
Asian Week
2008-01-04
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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