from the heart

So here's a radical idea: schools should just measure academic achievement. i get alarmed whenever (well-meaning) civil servants and educationists talk about factoring things like lifeskills and ethics into our school assessment systems. i mean, sure, i know where they're coming from. They're frustrated with the over-emphasis on academic results as a way of 'measuring' our students; they're concerned about 'holistic education'. They want our education system to produce more 'well-rounded' students. All good and noble intentions, it must be said.
.
Here's the thing, though. Some things in life are simply unquantifiable. Try to put a number to them, and the whole thing just degenerates into a farcical and meaningless, not to mention time-wasting, exercise in futility. (i remember the time when we had to test our students on 'teamwork' and cooperativeness in Project Work. At its worst, we were instructed to note whether or not students smiled and nodded at each other during group meetings to acknowledge their team-members' contributions. No kidding. It was ridiculous.) Assessing our students on Lifeskills? Like, grading them on whether they can cook a decent meal without using Maggi Mee? Giving them a Resilience Score based on how well they bounce back from a poor test result? The mind boggles.
.
The problem with this is that it treats only the symptoms of a deeper problem -- which is the belief that everything in life can be and ought to be quantified. It is essentially a materialist worldview -- one which has no place for the intangible things of the spirit. The solution to stressed-out students who feel that there is an over-emphasis on academic results in our education system is not to factor a wider range of skills and aptitudes etc into the assessment process. The solution is to show people that school results -- of whatever kind -- are not the be-all and end-all of life. It is to persuade them that some things, some of the most important things, simply cannot and should not be quantified. It is to protect as many things as possible from the encroachment of The System, rather than to try to Systemetise as many things as possible -- which is what we seem to be doing now.
.
Of course, such a solution would never work here in Singapore. i'm not sure if there's any place where it would work, but definitely not here. C'est la vie.
.
.