Educators should base their assessment of students' learning not on students' grasp of factsbut on the ability to explain the ideas, trends, and concepts that those facts illustrate.

Albert Einstein said: “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” It is simple, via language we comprehend a fact; we explain a fact to ourselves primarily in order to learn the fact. Teachers can require students to repeat their procedure of learning with a louder voice as an explanation to others, or the students can be tasked with writing the whole related concepts about a fact. This makes the facts to be established in the students’ minds and unlike the other ways _ like a mere memorization_ is not limited to the time of exam which after some days most of the knowledge cannot be recalled.

Now, to recommend that teachers should evaluate the explanatory skills of students about the ideas, trends and concepts a fact illustrates, as the statement above does, does not always hold true. There are two alternative ways equally practicable comparing to the explanatory examination of students.

First, memorization. When a child goes to school, the logical faculty is not powerful enough to comprehend the whole concepts. At that time, he or she merely keeps the facts in mind. For example, we memorize that velocity is the change in location divided by time to have a hint of what the speed is. The concept of velocity will be conferred on students when they learn time-derivative of displacement that takes years to achieve the prerequisite mathematical skills. So we see that especially in lower ages the explanatory evaluation cannot be demanded from children as the only evaluating method.

Secondly, practical skills. Even when the students can explain the facts, they need to apply them in the real world. Aside from subjective courses like philosophy which is theoretical in essence, laboratories and workshops are very important in the assessment of students’ learning. The ultimate goal of education is to provide the skillful and knowledgeable persons to make careers, not dilettante or pedantic individuals with no use. To illustrate, consider a student of architecture. It is not enough for the student to have the ability to explain the facts, memorize, or understand facts about, for instance, the arches in the modern architecture. The student should in practice make a model of structures by using his or her knowledge that manifests: beauty, usage, and durability. Without the assessment of such student in workshops and in practice whole educational process would be inefficient.

In sum, in order to have a proper evaluation of the students’ learning, there is not a sole method to rely on. As discussed in the body paragraphs, there is a set of methods, each will help us in evaluating the knowledge of a student. Assessing the students’ ability to explain the ideas, trends and concepts of a fact, is so advisable, however, it cannot be regarded always as the superior method.

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