Evaluating Learner Strengths and Weaknesses 8/28/09 10:35 AM

An earlier form of this essay appears in

the Spring 2005 issue of educational Horizons

Evaluating Learner Strengths and Weaknesses:

the Impediments of Formalism
© 2005 Edward G. Rozycki, Ed. D.

RETURN
edited 11/13/08

… occult causes: the very absurdity which Moliere so happily ridiculed

when he made one of his pedantic physicians account for the fact that
opium produces sleep by the maxim, Because it has a soporific virtue. -
-- John Stuart Mill1

Pseudo-Explanations

"Occult " causes are frequently offered as explanations. They may be difficult to distinguish from
explanations that have some scientific basis. Indeed, it is often lack of knowledge on the part of the
explainer that turns a useable concept into semantic puffery. Easy availability of such explanations -- you
can concoct them on the spur of the moment -- overrides any concern for their inaccuracy. 2

"Why can't Johnny read this book?" "Because it's beyond his readiness level!"

"How can you tell that?" "Because, as you say, he can't read the book!"

Another common one is this:

"How can I get Sammy to behave?" "Reinforce his desirable behavior!"

"How will I know if I have reinforced that behavior?" " If you see it occur more frequently!"

Then, of course, there is that good ol' fashioned distinction between between the "good kids" and the "bad
kids." The Good Kids you can expect to be good, even when they aren't because they have merely made a
mistake, or have had a misunderstanding, or have suffered a momentary, uncharacteristic slip. Good kids
are worth the investment of a teacher's time and trouble.

The Bad Kids you can rely on to be bad even when they appear otherwise because they're really trying to
trick you and lull you into being off your guard and who knows what mischief they're up to when your eyes
are off them? Such kids just waste a teacher's time and don't deserve the opportunities so lavishly afforded
them.3

Weaknesses and Formalism

We tend to overlook the fact that we judge performances in context. That is why people who are generally
competent outside of the classroom can appear so inept inside it. "Can you read this text?" is not merely a
demand to make some sense of it, but often, in school, to identify plot, and character, author intent, and or,
at a minimum, to be ready to recast the story in one's own words. (I teach philosophical analysis at the
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university. Educated adults who have long believed themselves to be quite competent readers have, initially,
rough going in my classes when I ask them to analyze a text in the methods of my tradition.)

Any individual competence can be recast as a display of weakness if we restrict the manner in which it is
performed. Formalisms are the, usually social, restrictions in terms of which we judge individual
achievements. Some formalisms are necessary. Many are controversial. Others are pernicious.

For example, anyone might traverse a 100-mile stretch of highway in an hour by just exercising a heavy
foot on the accelerator pedal. The formalism we call "speed limit" makes this feat difficult, if not impossible
to do. Do we, nonetheless, complain of a "weakness" in our driving? The recognition of the idea of
plagiarism places restrictions on many a student's ability to hand in an impressive essay. Concepts of theft
might interfere with an individual's otherwise quick accumulation of wealth. Yet behavior constrained by
such rules and regulations is not judged to be a weakness.

Pernicious formalisms are ones which have been, often unconsciously, introduced as schooling customs
from a particular social class or cultural group and which cannot be reasonably expected to be same for
every child. Pernicious formalisms might be the particularly idiosyncratic expectations of an individual
teacher, not necessarily intentionally perverse but stultifying all the same. Basically, our schools tend to
judge a child's strengths and weaknesses within a framework of expectations that the following constraints
are in place and have been adapted to: "Children, even though it is only 8AM (or even earlier), behave as
though you have had a good breakfast, enough sleep, warm clothing, time to prepare your lessons,
supportive parents, emotional calm, high energy despite the long bus trip to school, impeccable manners and
hyper-trained sphincters!"

Academic Formalisms

And then there are the Formalisms of the school and classroom "subject matter ." Whether these are
necessary or pernicious is often a controversial issue that must be decided on a case-by-case basis.4
Whether or not they even matter is debatable : there is no end of delight in our society to recounting the
many, many examples of successful, wealthy people who are weak in academics.

No one is weak or strong in a school subject except with respect to a task we might consider for them.
Johnny is never just "too weak" or "strong enough" without provoking the inquiry, "For what?" Students
who study foreign language via a reading translation method usually end up weak in communication skills
in that language. Phonics advocates fuss that whole language approaches to reading make for inadequate
readers. Whole language advocates fume to the contrary. Modern approaches to math, some argue, leave
students with weak computation skills. Mere computation is not really mathematics, rebut others.

There is a legitimate concern about student strengths and weaknesses. It comes from the recognition that
what the curriculum is determines what we count as strength and or weakness in a student. The curriculum,
in turn, is much determined by the organizational needs of the school, or even, merely, by administrative
convenience; consider, for example, the debates over whether block scheduling is appropriate, and for which
subjects.

So far as concerns for schooling equity are concerned, it is worrisome, indeed, that the administrative
convenience of the school district or of different levels of government might ultimately determine who
passes and who fails in the classroom. The practice of standardized testing, for example, is not rooted in
pedagogical concern.5
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Computers, et alia

A strength is the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect

performance in a given activity --- Clifton & Anderson 6

What about the effects of technology on our judgments of personal competence? Is being a poor speller a
weakness, especially since word processors have spell-checkers? Don't calculators make the memorization
of "math facts" obsolete? Few people can use a slide rule any more. Even engineers, relying heavily on
computers, can let their skills at solving differential equations decline .

We have generally given up that notion that everyone must be prepared to grow and hunt her own food . We
can and have to depend upon farmers, and food processors and retailers. Must we rebaptize every such
dependency a weakness?

Harry can enter almost any secure building undetected. Is this ability one of his strengths? It depends. Is he
a government investigator? Or a burglar? Louise doesn't know where the Islets of Langerhans are. Is this
inability a weakness? It depends. Is she a doctor? Or a travel agent?

The moral: Abilities do not necessarily indicate strengths. Inabilities do not necessarily indicate weaknesses.

Pursuing Educational Equity: a dilemma

The notion of formalism gives us a handle on something that many educators complain about in the present
national atmosphere of coercive achievement testing for public schools . The strong test emphasis, they
complain, interferes with their attempts to reach each child. Their complaints are dismissed as merely self-
serving. But, in fact, "No Child Left Behind," or anything vaguely similar which imposes a standardized
testing program on schools, may be a mechanism by which many children are stultified in their learning.

Purportedly in pursuit of educational equity, standardized tests are being used -- indeed, overused -- in
public schools as an organizationally convenient means of comparing student abilities. But standardized
testing imposes severe and often new levels of formalism in terms of which the academically relevant
behavior of the students is evaluated . Unless prior preparation has been done with the students, one ought
to expect vast discrepancies in achievement as measured by the tests. And every educator knows that
spending the majority of class time preparing for testing is bad curriculum, any way you look at it. It is
boring to student and teacher; and, it provokes rebellion and sabotage from both the "good" and the "bad"
students, as well as their parents. The uncircumspect pursuit of equality makes dependency a weakness. It
make school related abilities a strength. Change of context might well reverse these judgments, or make
them pointless.

REFERENCES

[1] A System of Logic http://www.la.utexas.edu/research/poltheory/mill/sol/sol.b01.c03.html

[2] See related essays on teaching and learning at

http://www.newfoundations.com/TeLeHTML/TLPallette.html

[3]The modern version of Malleus Maleficarum. See http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/. Suspected

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Evaluating Learner Strengths and Weaknesses 8/28/09 10:35 AM

witches are either guilty as evident in their behavior, or, lacking that evidence, they are proven guilty as
evidenced by our inclination -- doubtless induced in us through their spells -- to judge them as innocent.
See, also, E. G. Rozycki, "Dragons, Sea Monsters, and Kids Who Don't Want to Learn" at
http://www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Dragons.html

[4] Some concerns about formalism in the teaching of mathematics are given in "Acculturation to Formal
Reasoning" at http://www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Reasonable1.html#Acculturation

[5] For an overview of the structure of formalisms that link testing to student treatments see, "Rationales for
Intervention: from test to treatment to policy," http://www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Rationales.html

[6] Donald O. Clifton & Edward Anderson, (2002) Strengthsquest. Discover and develop your strengths in
academics, career and beyond. Washington, D.C. Gallup Organization. p. 8

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