Prophetic Pacyderms

     I love John Godfrey Saxe's version of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” where six blind men are positioned at different locations around the elephant each describing what he senses.  

     In my reading, I came across another beautiful piece using the majestic elephant.

      “I was at a meeting recently when a colleague told a story of being in India, where an educator there asked her, somewhat skeptically, ‘In America, you test your students a lot, don’t you?’  She replied, ‘Well, indeed, the United States has a national policy that requires testing of all students in certain grades.’  The Indian educator said, ‘Here, when we want the elephant to grow, we feed the elephant.  We don’t weigh the elephant.’ “

Taken from the article, “Don’t Weigh the Elephant—Feed the Elephant: Feedback Is Key in Assessment,” by Milton Chen, Executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation; edutopia.org