Education Week - January 16, 2013 - 32

▲
n
n
n
n

EDUCATION WEEK

JANUARY 16, 2013

www.edweek.org

COMMENTARY
www.edweek.org/go/commentary

PUTTING VALUE-ADDED EVALUATION TO THE (SCIENTIFIC) TEST 22
IT’S TIME FOR SUMMER LEARNING 22
LET’S REMOVE SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM THE K-12 DEBATE 23
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 24

Giving Cognition a Bad Name

By Mike Rose

ognition traditionally refers to a wide and rich
range of mental processes,
from memory and attention, to comprehending
and using language, to
solving a difficult problem in physics or choreography or a relationship. But over the last
few decades, cognition has been reduced to
a shadow of its former self. Under the No
Child Left Behind Act and the federal Race
to the Top initiative, cognition in education
policy has increasingly come to mean the
skills measured by standardized tests of
reading and mathematics. And as economists have gotten more involved in education, they’ve needed quantitative measures
of cognitive ability and academic achievement for their analytical models, so they’ve
used IQ or other standardized-test scores
(like the qualification test, known as the
afqt, that the armed forces use to determine eligibility) as a proxy for intelligence
or achievement. From a rich heritage (consider the Latin origin of the word cognition: to come to know), we’ve devolved to
a few digits on the afqt.
As if that were not enough, there
is now emerging on a number of
fronts—nicely summarized in Paul
Tough’s most recent book, How
Children Succeed—a belief that
our nation’s educational focus on
cognition has been misguided.
Rather than focusing our energies on the academic curriculum,
or on academic-intervention programs for the poor, we need to
turn our attention to the development of qualities of character
or personality, like perseverance,
self-monitoring, and flexibility. As
much as or more than the cognitive, the argument goes, these are
the qualities that account for success
in school and life.
The importance of traits like perseverance and flexibility is indisputable,
but what concerns me is that the advocates for character education seem to accept without question the reductive notion
of cognition that runs through our education policies, and by accepting it, further affirm it. The problem is exacerbated by the
aforementioned way economists carve up
and define mental activity. If cognition is
represented by scores on ability or achievement tests, then anything not captured in
those scores (like the desired qualities of
character) is, de facto, noncognitive. We’re
now left with a pinched notion of cognition
and a reductive dichotomy to boot.
This downplaying of the cognitive and
the simplistic construction of the cognitive
vs. noncognitive could have some troubling

implications for education, especially the
education of the children of the poor.
To begin with, the labeling of character
qualities as “noncognitive” misrepresents
them, particularly if you use the truer,
richer notion of cognition. Self-monitoring,
for example, has to involve a consideration
and analysis of one’s performance and mental state, which is a demanding cognitive
activity. Flexibility requires a weighing of
options and decisionmaking. The issue of
labels is not just a problem of terminology,
for if we don’t have an accurate description
of something, how can we help people develop it, especially if we want to scale up
our efforts?
Furthermore, these desired qualities are
developed over time in settings and through
relationships that are meaningful to students, which
most likely
means that
the set-

tings and relationships involve significant
cognitive tasks. Two classic preschool programs—the Perry Preschool and Abecedarian projects—have provided a research
basis for the character advocates. Serving
children from disadvantaged backgrounds,
these programs were cognitively rich in
imaginative play, language use, and activities that required thought and cooperation.
A very different example comes from
a study I just completed observing community college occupational programs as
varied as fashion and diesel technology. As
students developed competence, they also
became more committed to doing a job well,
were better able to monitor and correct
their performance, and improved their ability to communicate what they were doing,
and help others. You could be, by inclination, the most dogged
or communicative
person in the
world, but if
you don’t
know

what you’re doing with a garment or an engine, your tendencies won’t be realized in
a meaningful way in the classroom or the
workshop.
Also, we have to consider the consequences of this cognitive-noncognitive dichotomy in light of the history of American
educational practice. We have a powerful
tendency toward binary, either-or policies:
Think of old math vs. new math or phonics

“

Rather than focusing
our energies on the academic
curriculum, or on academic
intervention programs for
the poor, we need to turn our
attention to the development
of qualities of character.”
vs. whole language. Given this tendency, we
can predict a pendulum swing away from
the academic and toward character education. But over the past 50 years, attempts
at character education as a distinct pursuit have not been particularly successful.
Finally, the focus of the current
character education movement is on
low-income children, and the cold,
hard fact is that many poor kids are
already getting terrible educations in
the cognitive domain. There’s a stirring moment in Paul Tough’s book
where a remarkable chess teacher
decides she’s going to try to prepare
one of her star pupils for an admissions test for one of New York City’s
selective high schools. What she found
was that this stunningly bright boy had
gained little academic knowledge during
his eight years in school. It would be tragic
to downplay a strong academic education
for children like him.
By all means, let us take a hard look
at our national obsession with tests and
scores and grades, and let us think more
generously about what kinds of people we
want our schools to develop. Part of such
reconsideration would include a reclaiming
of the full meaning of cognition—one that
is robust and intellectual, intimately connected to character and social development,
and directed toward the creation of a better
world. n
MIKE ROSE is on the faculty of the graduate
school of education and information studies at
the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the
author of Back to School: Why Everyone Deserves a
Second Chance at Education (New Press, 2012).

Bob Dahm

http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/commentary

Education Week - January 16, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - January 16, 2013