The Holistic Child

I find the idea of measuring or assessing a child to be a strange idea. How can we find a way to make that measurement applicable to each and every child? The whole child, including all dimensions, I believe is not measurable. There are no two children alike. This is where we can get into the whole "labeling" issue. However we need to classify, identify, study, observe and understand them. When a child comes into our care we do an assessment of sorts. We work with the assignment called the Denver and the ASQ/ASQSE. It is a developmental milestone type check list. It would alert to something that wasn't on target in different areas of development. It wouldn't necessarily mean a problem but just make the parent aware and possibly point to further assessment in the future. This is fine but if we are trying to deconstruct labeling how do we make sure we are identifying and not labeling? Maybe this is where it should end in the early years? How many parents have worried because their child didn't speak or walk on target and they developed but fine? Why can't we just allow the child to ...be and grow as they will. I do believe there are necessary when the need presents itself but we also have to remember that children need to be able to develop at their rate and not be forced to be learn like everyone else. We assess our children everyday. We encourage, watch, motivate, and teach our children the things they need to do from the moment of birth. Our social impact on them exerts that force on them to "learn the next thing" therefore we are constantly informally assessing our own children. When the child reaches school age they are forced to be assessed by standardized tools. Some children never really reflect their full potential on those tests and get tend to get over looked in the "system". The side note on these is another way to label a child, not only for the parent but for the teachers. The young child that scores low all their life affecting self esteem and killing all motivation to pursue any type of higher education has probably been affected by the continual assessment and testing that they consistently fall short on. This child has the potential to be great at something, and its our job to help them find what that is. They could be the next Einstein or the next amazing composer or even a great postal worker. We have to help kids find their passion if they don't quite know what it is yet. I chose to take a look that the education in Singapore. "For us, education is a matter of survival," National University of Singapore President Tan Chorh Chuan stated in an interview about the education system. The whole country supports education and understands the importance of every person being well educated. This can be seen if you were to just take a look at the literacy rate of the country as a whole 40 years ago much of the country was illiterate, today they rate #1 in many areas of education including math and science. They start "rating" children based on the academic performance in first grade and they are rated first to last. They say this type of harsh rating system is not to demoralize the child, but to show them that they CAN do better next year. I find myself sensitive to this type of "labeling" but it seems to be working for them at a whole so who am I to say?! References: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/09/11/75082/commentary-singapores-focus-on.html