When the yardstick is crooked

“Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people - your family, friends, and co-workers, and even strangers you meet along the way.”

~ Barbara Bush, the wife of the 41st President of the United States, George H. W. Bush

When the yardstick is crooked, crooks ascend. When the measure of anything is irregular, disarray arrives. When confusion prevails; a people are, bent, bowed, crippled. When a people are in disorder; their minds are, deformed, deviating, disfigured, distorted. When the mind is, warped; thoughts flow askew, asymmetric, awry, lopsided, off-centre. When thinking is off balance, life is misery, becomes miserable. When life is agony, and anguish; people are afflicted, and crest fallen. When people are despondent and unhappy, they are hopeless. When, life is irremediable, poverty triumphs. When poverty-stricken, and wretchedness spawn, it give rise to: the corrupt, crafty, criminal; the deceitful, dishonest, dishonourable, dubious; the fraudulent, illegal, knavish, nefarious, questionable; the shady, shifty, underhand, unlawful, unscrupulous.

When the forbidden, and felonious rise; the yardstick becomes crooked. When the yardstick is, bent… the cycle, the revolution, and rotation, commences anew. The only thing is, as and as the cycle repeats, the degradation is greater, the disintegration complete. The society alters, and transforms, from one of values to one destitute of dignity, virtue, or standing: in other words, worthless.

All of life is ethical. All ethical judgements require a dependable standard of right and wrong. Crooked yardstick devalues life, produces sub standard, standardised minds.

It alters thinking styles, and prevents authentic achievements, inventive intelligence. Day by day, we make decisions on how to act; we form attitudes and cultivate emotions; we set goals for ourselves and try to achieve them, as individuals, and in groups such as family, friends, community, and even as a nation. By all things we do, we determine the kind of people we are: the kind of rules we observe, the kind of yardstick we apply, the kind of ethics we heed, defines us. All human behaviour is subject to appraisal according to moral values. Every one of our attainments, whether they be aims that are fulfilled or character traits that are developed; and every one of our actions, be it mental or verbal, express an unspoken code of right and wrong.

Values

There are very many moral values, which are, recommended to us. There are numerous implicit codes of right and wrong we go through every day, in the midst of a plurality of ethical viewpoints, which are in constant competition with each other. Some people make pleasure their highest value, while others put a premium on health. There are those who say we should watch out for ourselves, primarily; and yet others tell us that we should live to be of service to our neighbour.

What we hear advocated by those self-serving politicians often conflicts with the values endorsed in our society. Sometimes the decisions of our employer, violates laws established by the state. Our friends do not always share the code of behaviour fostered in our family. Often we disagree with the actions of the state. Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together and when their private activities are, resumed; they fly apart again. Hence, even though all of life is ethical, making ethical decisions can be confusing and difficult.

Every one of us needs a moral compass to guide us through the maze of moral issues and disagreements that confront us every moment of our lives. To put it another way, making moral judgements requires a standard of ethics. Thus, the refinement of an individual is, measured by the yardstick of his sense and sensibilities.

How do we arrive at such a yardstick? Academic institutions and employers have used test scores to label people as bright or not bright, as worthy academically or not worthy, as employable or not. In fact, from when a child enters school, and until one enters employment, we apply the standardised testing method as a yardstick.

However, standardised tests generally have questionable ability to predict, not only one's academic success, but also about one’s ethics. This is because most teachers teach restrictively: only such matters as to enable the student to pass the test.

Thus, the widespread tendency of teachers to “teach to tests” might be harmless if the tests were adequate indicators of the skills and abilities that would well serve pupils in their later academic and life endeavours.

But, we have seen that it is not; and evidence strongly suggests that standardised testing flies in the face of recent advances in our understanding of how people learn to think and reason.

Testing

I quote educational researcher Bruce C. Bowers: “However, though, the main purpose of standardised testing is to sort large numbers of students in as efficient a manner as possible. This limited goal, quite naturally, gives rise to short-answer, multiple-choice questions.

When tests are constructed in this manner, active skills, such as writing, speaking, acting, drawing, constructing, repairing, or any of a number of other skills that can and should be taught in schools are automatically relegated to second-class status.”

Some scholars have forcefully argued against the narrow views of ability measured by traditional mental tests. Many educators have sung the praises of new, authentic alternatives to standardised testing, such as performance assessment.

Advocates of performance assessment say schools ought to focus more on what people can do and less on how well kindergarteners, high school students, and prospective teachers take tests.

It is not enough that education be the mirror of society, education must also be the catalyst of change in the society. Thus, students should not only be merely feeling, but also thinking, individuals.

A teacher could stir the minds of each student by simply and justly guiding them and not dictating, so that they could discover their potential and strength by themselves. Education is a key to open their minds from the box of innocence and naivety.

Philosophically, this is Progressivism, a teacher allows students to construct their own meaning for them to grow as real independent thinking beings. If this happens, students will live by the rules, which their institution had instilled: The four pillars of education, “Tradition, Honour, Discipline, Excellence.” The main aim of education should be to produce competent, caring, loving, and lovable people, who think intelligently.

We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life.

But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. It is then essential to realise that students should not just be, boosted with their cognition but their values and ethics as well - which will manifest in their behaviour and positive actions.

This will produce a society that the world will be envious of, and one that we rightly could be proud of: a society whose yardstick is not crooked.

See you this day next week. Until then, keep thinking; keep laughing.
Life is mostly about these two activities.

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