John Stuart Mill argues that standardized testing is the best way for states to ensure that children are receiving a basic education without requiring the state to decide what opinions to teach children, for, parents should decide such matters. However, standardized testing has been shown to discriminate against individuals who are not part of the mainstream culture and also leads to decreases in creativity. A better alternative would be to have a weekly minimum instructional time period, such as 10 hours. This would both increase the flexibility of what is learned by children and not have the same negative effects as standardized testing. Additionally, such a system would accord well with Mill granting positive utility when individuals are at liberty to choose which activities to pursue.
In On Liberty, Mill (1859) argues that the state, i.e., the government, should require that children receive some sort of basic education. Mill writes of education, “Hardly any one indeed will deny that it is one of the most sacred duties of the parents after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that being an education fitting him well in life towards other and towards himself.” This is a premise on which Mill builds his argument. He is stressing the importance of. In fact, Mill finds education so important that he believes it should be enforced by the state, a form of paternalism. Generally, Mill argues that the state should not interfere with the actions of the public, except to prevent harm. However, as a utilitarian, Mill recognizes the overwhelming benefits to society and to individuals that they be required by the state to be educated. The utilitarian calculation must be, then, that such a requirement would bring about more utility than the lack of such a requirement.
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"Mill’s Educational Requirements".
Mill also argues that the state should enforce educational requirements of children by fining parents any time that a child has not been found to be adequately educated. To determine this, Mill proposes that there be standard examinations. That is, Mill argues that uniform examinations that cover the basics of a proper education, without inserting opinion into the examination, such as language and the sciences should be the measure by which the state determines whether a child has received a proper education. This system, Mill argues, would allow parents to continue to heavily influence the thoughts of their children, at least when their children are at early ages, without sacrificing the basic education of such children. Additionally, the state will not be forced to decide whether to incorporate certain opinions, such as religious or philosophical opinions, into required curriculum. It will be for the parents to decide whether their children should be taught such matters.
Mill’s argument can be formulated into the following set of premises and conclusion:
(P1) It is the duty of the parents to make sure that their children are education
(P2) This duty is likely to go unfulfilled in many cases if the state does not require such a duty to be fulfilled by the parents
(P3) Parents should have the final say in what religious or philosophical doctrines that their children study
(P4) Only if the state requires standardized tests be taken over the fundamental educational requirements can the state preserve P1, P2, and P3.
(C1) Thus, the state should require that standardized tests be taken over the fundamental education requirements
Mill’s reasoning relies heavily on deductive reasoning. He seems to deduce that parents should have the final say in which opinions are taught to their children. However, Mill also relies on induction when considering the consequences of standardized testing. Nevertheless, Mill’s weakest premise in this argument is (P4).
There are a number of problems with standardized testing. Research suggests that standardized tests often penalize creative thinking (Powers & Kaufman, 2004), even when such tests only test for fundamental subjects such as math, science, and English. With the pervasiveness of standardized tests and teaching towards such tests nowadays, it seems that standardized tests, or more specifically the teaching towards standardized tests, may negatively influence children by inhibiting their creative thinking skills. Such would be the case, too, under Mill’s standardized test requirements.
Another problem with standardized testing is that it is almost always culturally biased. Studies suggest that the sorts of standardized testing that Mill is a proponent of almost always have cultural biases that make it difficult for students from non-mainstream cultures to excel at (Altshuler, & Schmautz, 2006). The cultural biases contained in such tests diminish their ability to determine whether a child, especially a child from a unique culture, has been adequately educated. For example, someone from Greenland may arrive in the state with children. There may be certain language and cultural barriers that prevent the child from learning the materials that are going to show up on the standardized tests. This may cause the failure of such children on these tests, resulting in an unfair fine for the parent.
A preferable alternative to standardized testing in Mill’s scenario may be a minimum time for instructional hours per week. This would give the parents the opportunity to structure their educational programs more to their liking and would be enforceable by random, infrequent audits of households with children. Granted, this may slightly decrease the chances that some children receive basic education, but it would certainly increase the flexibility that parents have in teaching their children and would likely cost the state much less. In fact, such flexibility entails an increase in liberty, which factors in favor of increased utility according to Mill.
- Altshuler, S. J., & Schmautz, T. (2006). No Hispanic student left behind: The consequences of “high stakes” testing. Children & Schools, 28(1), 5-14.
- Mill, J.S. (1859). Applications. In On liberty. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
- Powers, D. E., & Kaufman, J. C. (2004). Do standardized tests penalize deep-thinking, creative, or conscientious students? Some personality correlates of Graduate Record Examinations test scores. Intelligence, 32(2), 145-153.
