Training and testing are good for your brain
HOW many people would go to any medical practitioner who had never been tested?
How many would allow a loved one to have surgery performed by a “surgeon” who had never been tested? How many would get into a plane with a pilot who had never been tested?
The process of engaging and extending mental and motor function through the application of selfdirecting tests advances the mind and the body.
Self-explorative, self-extending, self-improvement tests are genetically “hardwired” in the brain. This self-extending and self-testing is a DNA brain-based imperative, because “the brain knows” that it needs this process of self-exploration and self-testing (both through thinking and movement) to advance the universal human condition.
There are shortcomings in all testing regimes, which of course includes the NAPLAN test.
However, that does not mean tests should be abandoned.
Rather, the nature and administration of tests might be altered to better reflect their original intent to identify students and schools in need of targeted support in literacy and numeracy.
Tests are continually taking place in all manner of disciplines. Any number of examples can be used here: sport, music, maths, the arts, the sciences and any other discipline one cares to mention.
I will focus on football (soccer, rugby and Australian rules). In all of these, there is a test taking place every week.
The ultimate test is the weekly game between two teams. However, before any player is selected to play in these games, they must engage in the training and learning that takes place beforehand.
This training will be hard and unrelentingly effortful; the training will stretch each player’s physical, mental, emotional and skill-based capacity. All of this training is aimed at extending and advancing knowledge and skill potential. And the expectation is that each player will engage in this process willingly.
The same principle is applicable in literacy and numeracy, or any other academic pursuit.
Unless a student personally and willingly applies themselves to do their daily reading, writing and arithmetic requirements, the brain’s neurological system will not develop to provide the student with the complex deep, thick, rich brain, with its associated complexity of connections, which provides the student with the cognitive ability to seamlessly engage with and have intellectual insights, understanding and knowledge in the subject areas being studied.
Unless personal effort is activated, in the form of daily training and weekly tests, there will be no associated advancement in mental and emotional toughness.
If you watch children playing, you can see they are not afraid of tests.
So why are children taught to be afraid of tests by adults when they begin school?
Dr Ragnar Purje is an adjunct
lecturer with Cquniversity
DR RAGNAR PURJE