Mining For Hidden Gems

  Before there was art criticism, there was art. Before there was literary analysis, there was literature. Before there were rules, there was the game. Standards come into being long after there is a large body of accumulated knowledge and experience about a field. And they are always subjective! They are as limited as the vision, expertise and knowledge of those who write them. They are as universally applicable as the degree of participation of those who are subjected to them. So basically, standards, benchmarks, and milestones are all man-made. They change and evolve as our collective knowledge about a field grows and deepens. Standards are also written by people and as such reflect the values and biases of those people. Sometimes standards are guided by political ideologies rather than scientific research.  The more I teach, the more I question the unquestioned use of standards. To insist that every learner master the same concepts at the same time and to the same degree is foolish