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

For most students, grasping some facts is much easier than understanding the concepts or ideas those facts illustrate. For those students who are willing to think deeply, mastering the common laws or ideas behind the facts can facilitate them with larger perspective to think about other facts. However, requiring every student to explain what concepts the facts illustrate is unreasonable, since the standard answer may restrict the thinking and imagine abilities of students. Educators should pay more attention to thinking extension of their students, as well as their ability to solve some realistic problems.

At the first place, evaluating students according to their ability to understand the concepts and ideas the facts illustrate could really prompts students to think deeply. To comprehend the facts more thoroughly, the students would manage to categorize the facts they learned. By classifying those facts, they have to utilize the ideas, or the methods they learned previously. The process of classifying facts, analyzing facts by using knowledge they learned can motivate them to think logically, as well as to put theory into practice. For example, when students are learning about the operation of a machine, once the teachers assess their performance on the degree of understanding, they would manage to search for more information about the principle, advantages and disadvantages of this machine and offer their own thoughts. Thus, this kind of assessment could motivate students to think thoroughly and improve their performance in work.

However, this assessment neglects the grasp of facts, which is also a significant part of learning. For the example of the machine, if teachers only focus on whether students know more about the principles and possible improvement of this machine, they may neglect that learning how to operate this machine is more important. The experience of operation, and the possible emergency happned during manipulating can only be discovered during the operation. This statement overlooks that only by grasping facts comprehensively, students would find more practical problems and come up with the way to solve them. Thus, the educators should take students’ grasp of facts into consideration when they assess the performance of students.

Another important issue should be considered is that educators should assess their students on different abilities rather than only certain ability. The students who possess their unique abilities cannot be discouraged by a unify standard. For instance, while some people do well in illustraing and classifying facts, others may be better at grasping facts and solving practical problems. The educators should encourage students to maintain their characteristics by assessing them flexibly.

In conclusion, although assessing students on their ability to explain the concepts of facts is meaningful, the ability of grasping facts should not be neglected. Furthermore, the educators should encourage students to have various abilities rather than assess them with unified standard.