In Praise Of Praise Poetry

It seems that every K-12 student and teacher in Kentucky is currently mired in testing and most of our college students have just emerged from or are currently battling final exams. I’ve written before about my concerns regarding our obsession with K-12 testing (what is our return for the time and money invested in it?) and you can watch John Oliver’s depressingly amusing description of standardized testing to learn more about some of those problems with this practice. But even when you set aside the questions about the cost of time and money, I know this obsession with testing (and all the attendant preparation and practice forced on students and teachers) is damaging our children in many important ways (formulaic writing, surface-level reading, lack of critical thinking just to name a few), but what really disturbs me is to hear how many students take those test scores to heart and believe those numbers truly represent their value as a person.

Read the full “In Praise Of Praise Poetry” post on my Metawriting blog at: http://metawriting.deannamascle.com