When viewing children holistically, one has to take into consideration "the whole child". This includes all developmental areas but also, the parents, the home environment, cultural background, and the community in which the child lives. To fully educate a child to reach his/her greatest potential, one has to recognize all these factors. As we all know, children develop a different stages. With this understanding, is it right to compare one child with another? When you measure or assess, you are using information to dictate where a child is developmentally based on the "average". But who decided "average" or "normal" should look like this or that? During this week's lesson, I read an article by Kathie Snow and she talks about "redefining disability". In her article she states, "“If we do not allow other diagnoses to define human beings, we can no longer allow a disability diagnosis to define a person, his ability, potential or character.” I relate this to assessing children because it is my personal opinion that one cannot fully measure "the whole child" equally. You cannot compare the home environment, the parents, the community of one child with another and say one child will do better developmentally than the other. So the question is, what guidelines should be used to assess or measure "the whole child"?
In doing my research for how school-aged children are assessed around the world, I chose Africa and found "in developing countries, an estimated 99 million children of primary-school age are not enrolled, and of those enrolled, only 78% complete primary school.44 Most children who fail to complete are from sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. Only around half of the children enroll in secondary schools. Furthermore, children in some developing countries have much lower achievement levels than children in developed countries in the same grade.45 In 12 African countries, surveys of grade 6 (end of primary school) children showed that on average 57% had not achieved minimum reading levels."(2008) This correlates to how can one fully assess "the whole child" when there are so many factors to take into consideration. "Many children younger than 5 years in developing countries are exposed to multiple risks, including poverty, malnutrition, poor health, and unstimulating home environments, which detrimentally affect their cognitive, motor, and social-emotional development. There are few national statistics on the development of young children in developing countries." (2008) If there are few statistics on the development of young children in these countries, what guidelines would they use to design an assessment for the whole child?
I do not agree with assessing children's academic achievement through standardized testing. How can you truly measure the cognitive ability, mental health, emotional stability, home environment, the parents, and the student's community through a multiple choice test that lasts an hour and 30 minutes? To truly measure the whole child, one cannot achieve this by putting questions in a booklet and giving him/her an answer sheet. One has to be engaged, observe, and be fully committed to the child.
References
Grantham-McGregor,, S. (2008, March 20). Child development in developing countries:
Developmental potential in the first 5 years for children in developing countries. <i>
</i>. Retrieved June 15, 2014,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/mid/UKMS459/
Snow, K. REDEFINING DISABILITY. <i>Revolutionary Common Sense</i>, 1-2.
Retrieved June 11, 2014, from
https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201460_02/MS_MECS/EDUC
_6160/Week% 206/Resources/Resources/embedded/snow_educ6160.pdf
