Sense of reality — i.e. assessment
Assessment . Or, as Tymms (2007) describes it, "one of those things you think you know (...) until you start to really think hard about it" (p.1). So far, I have experienced four educational systems defined by the way they assess but not necessarily empowered by it. Hence I'd ask, why this pressure of having to endlessly prove that we measure up? The issue Let us start by getting an assumption out of the way: that examinations are necessary at all. Testing, and other analogue contraptions, are an invention of the modern educational system and intrinsic only to industrialised societies. They were practically non-existent when people learned from elders, governesses, or master tradesmen who organically and informally attested if one rose to meet whatever perfunctory yardstick they held in hand. Explicit testing existed only in the form of oral or practical examinations that (depending on the tradition) were the bases of teachers' methodology or took place as impromp...
