Students should be able to show what they know. Many folks take this as a self-evident truth. But I think it demands closer examination.

Possessing a skill or piece of knowledge is not the same thing as being able to show it. This is why many smart young people hate school. Understanding, figuring out, and getting a handle on a piece of knowledge is really exciting, but have to prove to somebody else that you understand is a big fat pain in the neck.

Finding proof of student learning is a huge part of the teacher's job, and whether it is done poorly or not makes all the difference in that teacher's effectiveness. There is a huge difference between "How do I figure out if this student understands" and "How do I make this student prove to me he gets it." The first is a valuable approach; the second is the first step on the road toward wasting everybody's time.

And there's the problem. If we start with the assumption（假定）that a student who knows must be able to show his knowledge to our satisfaction, we will be traveling down the wrong road The more we demand that students prove to us that they know the stuff, the more we will design artificial tasks that demand a set of skill and knowledge entirely different from the skills and knowledge we really want to measure.

As a classroom teacher, I have to remember that the burden is on me to find a way to see what my students know; the burden is not on them to put on whatever trained monkey show I design for my own case and convenience.

It may not be the worst thing ever to say "Students should be able to show what they know." But I think it's far more useful to say, "Teachers should be able to discover what students know."

【小题1】What does the underlined phrase in the second paragraph mean?

A．Very dangerous.	B．Very difficult.
C．Very annoying.	D．Very frequent.

【小题2】What does the author think of the artificial tasks designed to test students' learning?

A．They should be limited in number.

B．They are a huge burden on teachers.

C．They slide away from their original purpose.

D．They should mainly focus on effectiveness.

【小题3】What is the main idea of the passage?

A．Students should be able to show what they know.

B．Teachers should be able to discover what students know.

C．There are many ways to find proof of student learning.

D．There should be better understanding between teachers and students.