The Ultimate Goal of Education: Student’s Holistic Growth

There are two articles that are in focus in this reflection paper. The first article, entitled
“Producing Commodities or Educating Children? Nurturing the Personal Growth of Students in
the Face of Standardized Testing”, discusses primarily how the approach to education has
emphasized on achieving high results in standardized testing in the expense of caring and
being concerned with the personhood of the students. There are three main themes that
surface in this article. The first is that there is a need to revisit the schools’ educational goals
(Barrier-Ferreira, 2008, p.139). In pursuit of excelling in standardized testing, schools now tend
to overlook students’ character formation. The second theme in this article is the need for
schools to encourage social interaction among students in order to attain the balance between
academic formation and interpersonal skills formation. The third theme arising from the article
is the need for schools to refocus on the overall growth of the student as a person and not
simply focus on the student as subjected to standardized testing. After all, academic
excellence is not incompatible with holistic growth.
The second article, entitled “Transforming Deficit Myths about Learning, Language, and
Culture”, revolves around the wrong beliefs and practices of schools in their approach to
teaching children coming from non-mainstream backgrounds, such as children of color,
children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, and those who are labeled to have learning
disabilities (Flores, Cousin, & Diaz, 1991). One false thinking that permeates some schools is
that students coming from non-mainstream background have language and culture deficiency
which makes them incapable of catching up with the rest of the students in the mainstream.
Another false thinking and which has become a common practice in schools is to pull out
students who are labeled as at-risk from the regular classroom and be taught as a separate
group. This practice does not benefit this group of students because language is best learned
in “rich and integrated settings” (Flores, Cousin, & Diaz, 1991, p.373). Another misconception
is that standardized tests are sufficient to measure the ability and capability of students thus
allowing schools to categorize and label some students as at-risk. Another key point in this
article is the misinterpretation of at-risk students’ parents distance from the school authorities
as a sign of unconcern and apathy towards their children’s education. Schools must consider
to work collaboratively with parents and see them as partners in the education of the children.
What stood out as particularly interesting in both these articles is the ironic reality in the field of
education. The purpose of education is primarily for the holistic formation of the student
himself, preparing him to succeed in real life; yet with the evolution of the field, under the guise
of improving education through measures such as standardized testing, what often happens is
the goal becomes hazy and the overall growth of the student is overlooked or sometimes
missed.
I have experienced this reality in schools. I have worked in elementary and secondary schools
where students are oftentimes reduced to numbers and scores. It is an unfortunate reality. I
believe that schools should be able to bring back the humane side of education and its primary
authentic goals by building a school culture that fosters interpersonal formation, spiritual
formation, and social formation. This can be built particularly through teacher training and
related school activities. Schools must be able to strike the balance through school activities
and events, integrated in their curriculum, of forming all aspects of the person of the student,
that is, intellectually, humanly, and socially.
 Works Cited
Barrier-Ferreira, J. (2008, January/February). Producing commodities or educating children?
Nurturing the personal growth of students in the face of standardized testing. The
Clearing House, 81(3).
Flores, B., Cousin, P., & Diaz, E. (1991, September). Transforming deficit myths about
learning, language, and culture. Language Arts, 68(5). Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41961877