I originally drafted this as a comment to Claire’s excellent post, but it got long, so I posted it here instead. You should really go read that first.

While the need for education reform is obvious, I think there are two conflicting ideas when you talk about the OECD and PISA and Walter Percy and dogfish. I loved that essay by Percy, and it’s absolutely clear to me that a number of subjects are damaged, in some cases irreparably, by being approached as an object of study. Look at this forum thread: it’s eighteen pages of people slagging many books which are, often rightly, considered some of the best literature has to offer. You might not be able to fix The Fountainhead with a dogfish, but you could certainly do wonders for The Great Gatsby.

What dogfish can’t do is raise PISA scores.

I read over the guidelines and sample questions for the Science section of the PISA. While it’s better than most standardized tests I’ve had the misfortune of encountering during my education, it still runs headfirst into the standard failure modes of the genre. When every question must be asked in a single paragraph, and when the correct answers (of which there are never more than two) must be expressed in a single sentence, the chances for subtlety, poetry and joy must be omitted from the testing pamphlet, if they are even considered.[1] The answers to every question in the exam have already been determined before a single student sits down and unsheathes a #2 pencil. Continue reading Students Cannot Live on Bubble Sheets Alone →