Excerpted from:

For the Children's Sake

  
by Susan Schaeffer MacAulay
   

Susan has much to say about education

and what is truly needful and

valuable, including the area of Testing.

Here are several excerpts from

her book...

"All children are different; there is no "normal" age when the child is "ready."  And the speed of mastery will vary enormously.  A child should never be made to feel that he is lagging behind others of his age. We don't harass babies of eighteen months to walk if they still crawl.  Einstein only started talking at four years!"

"By being allowed to learn at their own speed, the children taught by Charlotte Mason were happy with their mastery of skills. They did not "fail" or "pass." They learned how to read and write accurately. A high standard was expected, but at a level appropriate to the child's ability. It was like climbing one's own private ladder. It was not to be like a race."

   
"Good little Sally made only one mistake, she gets an A!  But poor struggling Johnny tried his best and is rewarded with a D. How can Johnny ever take a proper joy in the fact that he learned a new step? When one three-year-old in the family learned to ride a bike, we all clapped and smiled. Another time, another child with quite different gifts learned to ride a two-wheeler at six years. Such smiles!  He was as pleased as punch with himself. And that was as it should be."

   
"The Bible teaches that we are like parts of a body. In other words, we are different from each other, we all have different gifts. How immoral to apply an arbitrary yardstick to the little child and expect him to progress at some "normal" speed!  We take from him the joy of accomplishing new skills which should be part of growing up."

   
"Expect high standards, but let them be appropriate to the individual who is progressing at his own rate of development.  (All five of the above sections are from pages 35-36) 
   
"Teachers and schools are often pressed with curriculum and/or examination requirements, the aim being to mesh children into our society like so many cogs in a wheel. They must here take heed if they are to put into practice Christian principles. They should appreciate the nuances of the individual child and seek to serve the child, not the system." (page 48) 
   
"If I were to have to label much educational material today, I'm afraid a large percentage would definitely be twaddle. How colorfully and scientifically our generation talks down to the little child!  What insipid, stupid, dull stories are trotted out! And we don't stop there.

We don't respect the children's thinking or let them come to any conclusions themselves!

We ply them with endless questions, the ones we've thought up, instead of being silent and letting the child's questions bubble up with interest. 

We tire them with workbooks that would squeeze out the last drop of anybody's patience.

We remove interesting books and squander time on a clinical procedure called "reading skill testing," using idiotic isolated paragraphs which nobody would dream of choosing to take home to read.

The recording of testable features of a child's taught tricks ("skills") is held to be more important than the mysterious, exciting growth of a person." (page 16) 

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I got the photo for the

title graphic at Pixabay.