Remember Winston Churchill
Near the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in London’s Westminster Abbey is a green marble plaque that reads, “REMEMBER WINSTON CHURCHILL”. Churchill died on January 24, 1965 so it’s a fitting time to do this. If you’re rusty on your history, Winston Churchill was a member of the English House of Commons for 62 years and was Prime Minister of Britain twice. More importantly, Churchill was the Prime Minister that declared “We shall never surrender” to Germany after it conquered most of Europe in 6 Weeks. The man who worked tirelessly to establish an alliance with the United States during WWII, and who probably more than anyone else deserves the credit for an allied victory against Nazi Germany. Civilization should remember Winston Churchill as a strong champion in the battle of good vs evil.
We in education should also remember Winston Churchill, but for very different reasons than those listed above: Winston Churchill couldn’t pass an exam to save his life! As a member of Britain’s upper class, Churchill attended several prestigious schools during his education and he completely failed the entrance exams of every one of them. When he applied to go to a military college after high school, it took him 3 times to pass the entrance exam and he scored so poorly that he was forced to join the cavalry rather than the infantry where he wanted to go. His test scores were so low that his parents often had to use their influence (and sometimes generous donations) to convince institutions to admit him.
Churchill is a hero of mine and I’ve studied his life closely. He was poised to ascend to the office of Prime Minister during or after WWI, but the disastrous Gallipoli campaign that was originally his idea virtually destroyed his political career. He came out of “the Wilderness” as he called it only at the end of the 1930s because the things he said regarding politics and especially the new political order that had risen in Germany were astute and correct: He understood and opposed the Nazis before and throughout WWII. He also understood how to win the war and he predicted the Cold War (It was Churchill who coined the term ‘Iron Curtain’). I point this out because this man-who would be considered a total failure if you rate using test scores-was successful precisely because his viewpoint was so correct most of the time. Simply, he was usually smarter than most others.
Churchill’s test performance is important today precisely because of the value we now put on standardized exams. How do you square his poor test performance with his success in life? Should we call him or his teachers a failure? As a person who’s been in the field of education for 20 years, I don’t personally associate much importance to exams, but my entire educational career has been in the shadow of some rule passed down from Heaven that a school’s exam score is practicallly the only indicator that matters concerning a school. Students feel it too: I’ve been in auditoriums with students where principals pointed out publicly that certain minorities don’t fare well on tests. (Ouch!) All of us know people who don’t do well on tests and carry stigma and shame because of it.
The important question is how much weight should we give test exams like the SAT, the ISAT, the IRI? Here in Idaho, high schools are rated in only two ways: How do the (10th grade) students do on the ISATs? How many students were able to graduate in 4 years? Middle schools on only one standard: How do the students do on the ISATs? Elementary Schools: How do students do on the ISATs and the IRI? This is the only way we judge the success or failure of schools.
“Experts” act as if exams are the only legitimate way to rate schools and students, but are they? What about curriculum quality? What about basic pass rates? What percentage of students enroll in advanced courses? How many students graduate not just in 4 years, but how many graduate period? How many students go on to college? I’m not against exams, but I know that they are just one way to look at things and they’re not always accurate: Often, some of the students with the best grades end up having the worse test scores and some of the students with the worst grades have the best test scores. This is because earning good grades requires hard work and good test scores require academic skill. These are two different things. By the way, in the game of life, which is more important: Work ethic and the ability to persevere, or academic skill and the ability to pass exams?
So as we near the anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death, I ask that we remember him not just for his greatness and the debt we owe to him in preserving our freedom, but also to remember him because he’s an excellent example of how unimportant test scores can end up being. Remember Winston Churchill.
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