Chapter Sixteen - Additional Resources

Interview conducted on 12 March 2003

Q: There seems to be a lot of testing in Macau schools. Would you like to comment n this? What do you consider to be the advantages and disadvantages of testing in Macau schools?

A: You’ve got a problem in Macau schools. Firstly the students have come through a system that has been testing them since they were three and four years old, so that by the time they get to secondary school they are so used to being tested that if they aren’t tested then they think that the work is not worth learning. For example last month I was trying to introduce my students to extracting and paraphrasing material from several book sources so that they could use it for a project they were working on about local cultural characteristics in Macau and the Pearl River delta region. I said to my students ‘this work isn’t going to be tested but I think you might find it interesting and useful anyway’. So what happened? They didn’t take it seriously; they didn’t bother to use the material. Then, when it came to the time when they had to really prepare to make a presentation about the Pearl River delta region they nearly all panicked and came to me asking for help. It happens again and again – they only learn what is going to be tested.

The problem gets worse, because as soon as they have learned the material and then it has been tested, most of them forget most of the material after the test. So, what we have here is a system in which tests are the driving force to make students study but then they don’t really learn or understand much, and they forget a lot. So, the test is nice for teachers because it help them to see how much content the students have remembered, but actually it doesn’t help the students to learn deeply, to use their own initiative, to be autonomous learners, or to apply anything that they have learned. It’s like learning a telephone directory for a test.

Q: But surely it’s not as bad as that?

A: Well, some of them do understand what they read, and tests forces the lazy students to get on with some real learning, and there’s no doubt that students here only work when they are put under pressure. But my problem is that I think that what they are also learning are bad learning habits. Let’s be honest here, they’re only learning for the sake of the marks, for the sake of the test. If you take the test away then I can guarantee that they’ll not be bothered to learn as much.

Q: Why do you think the students are so lazy then?

A: Look, they’ve had years and years of only doing what the teachers have told them to do, they’re not used to thinking for themselves because the teachers tell them what to think, when to think, how to think, and, because of testing, how well they have thought. They’ve had that for years. The students are totally dependent on the teacher; they don’t have a mind of their own, so how can you suddenly expect them to start thinking for themselves. If you want students to stop being lazy then you have to start from an early age requiring them not to be lazy thinker. What I mean is that they have to think for themselves; they have to organize themselves, they have to take responsibility for more than just telling back to the teacher what the teacher has told them or what the textbook has told them. They have to start exercising their minds a bit more.

Q: But it’s said that Chinese learners learn and by reading and re-reading, and that by going through material over and over again they understand it, so what’s the problem?

A: Yes, I’m sure that’s right, but what a wasteful use of time. Why ask them to spend two hours on something that they could do in ten minutes if they were to use a more efficient learning strategy? And anyway, let’s be honest here, what they are doing here is learning what the teacher has told them to learn. There’s no real autonomy here – the students are simply memory machines. Now, of course the students have to learn, and they sometimes have to learn what the teacher has instructed them to learn, but surely not all the time. How would you like to sit in a lesson day after day, year after year, learning and reciting. It kills students and real learning.

Q: But let’s be fair here, tests are useful as a quick instrument to check learning. And the size of the classes in Macau is usually large, so tests are a good way of seeing quickly how much a large group of students has learnt.

A: Yes, of course, I’m not against tests. What I am against is the constant testing of students. For example I am told that I have to test the students once a week. Sometimes it is wrapped up in a ‘quiz’, but we all know that it’s a test really. That’s all the assessment that takes place. Let’s talk about other kinds of assessment in Macau, project assessment, authentic assessment, diagnostic assessment, formative assessment; they’re not happening. What I’m saying is that testing on its own is not necessarily a bad thing. But the problem is that it’s the only kind of assessment that is done, and it’s done so much that it kills true learning and motivation. The students only learn for the test, that’s all.

Q: So, why don’t you do something different?

A: Are you mad? I’d be out of a job. At our school we have to do what the principal says.

Q: Schools in Macau have to prepare students for work and higher education. Surely if students are as lazy as you say, then teachers have a responsibility to test students to make sure that they learn so that they can get jobs and into university. Teachers are just doing their job?

A: But what has made the students lazy? They’ve learned to become compliant, dependent and helpless. If you take away the teacher then they couldn’t learn; they don’t know how to. That’s the problem, and testing is at the heart of the problem. Of course, let’s not blame the teachers, they are only doing what they have been told to do. If you were in a large class of say fifty students then I’m quite sure that you would use testing a lot, not only for speed but also because it’s a way of controlling students, and let’s be honest, class control is a problem if you have fifty students in the class. So there are good reasons why teachers use tests, but we have to see that they cause more and more learning problems as the students get older. They teach students that the only kind of education is that which can be measured by a test. Isn’t that just awful? What a narrow view of education. They don’t want learners, they want robots.

Q: Surely it’s preparing student for the real world to know that they are going to be assessed?

A: Look, tests put teachers and students under sever pressure and overload; the students only learn what’s going to come up on the test. It makes student mark seekers, not learners. Look what happens to the students who don’t do well. How do you think they feel about themselves? And let’s face it, if you don’t achieve 100 per cent then, in a sense, you are not perfect, you have failed. Tests automatically make failures of most of our students. No wonder they don’t want to learn. Would you like to learn in a system that is constantly telling you that you are failing? No wonder they lose interest, they are only taught that education is about learning something mechanically. That’s not real learning. Where is creativity? Where is autonomy? Where is enjoyment? I had a student who said to me that she didn’t bother to answer the difficult parts of a test because she knew that it would take too long, so she went on to answer all the easy parts because she knew that, in that way, she would get more marks. And she was right