STUDENT EVALUATION IN A CHRISTIAN SCHOOL

A Biblical foundation for student evaluation

Evaluation is a constant aspect of the human experience. Evaluation in the school is not wrong. As well as being surrounded by numerous formal and informal evaluation in all of life, we also find that the Bible lays out clearly for us the principle that evaluation is an important part of life.

- The prophet Amos, as God’s spokesman to His people, reminded them that God was ‘setting a plumb line among my people of Israel’ to measure the quality of their devotion and faithfulness

- We are reminded many times that we are accountable to God for our Activities, Paul reminds us ‘Each one should test his own actions’.

It is important that we evaluate the activities of the students in our classes. However, if we are to avoid errors and excesses, we have to have a clear understanding of how evaluation is seen from the Biblical perspective.

THE BIBLICAL EVALUATION PRINCIPLE AS DEMONSTRATED IN THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS

Matthew 25: 14—30

In this story, Jesus is giving a picture of the evaluation aspect of his Second Coming. It is very important to see what does and does not happen in the evaluation of the three servants. Their evaluation is not comparative. The response of the master to each servant is not influenced by the performance level of the other servants. Rather, the key to the assessment that occurs here is a concern with how well each of the servants has used the talents that he had been given. The Master and Jesus start with the talents that have been given to each of us, proceed through and look at the task that has been set, and conclude with an evaluation of us on the basis of how well we each have used our given talents to carry out the task. Whether one person concludes with a more substantial return or a less substantial return than another person is not of primary importance. The key evaluative principle is how well each person has used the talents given to him/her.

The Apostle Paul reiterates this same evaluative principle in his letter to the Christians in Rome. In an attempt to help those believers to gain a proper understanding of themselves in the kingdom of God, he challenges them to a humble perspective. Notice how Paul follows the example of Jesus and recognises the individual nature of assessment.

“Do not think of yourself more highly that you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” Romans:12:3

This Biblical pattern of assessment has radical implications for evaluation in the Christian school. Secular schools today usually use performance as their basis for evaluation. Therefore, student reports are full of performance grades. Society demands that— Society honours and is based completely on the basis of performance—only the best of the students work is displayed on the classroom wall, and so on. It is true that we need to know how our output relates to others, but this should not be the basis of the overall evaluation that we give to our students.

It is this erroneous evaluation mentality that generates the sad situation that teachers and students see everyday where the ‘smart student’ in class receives all the recognition even though his mark may have been achieved through much less effort than the more ordinary mark of the class.

Using Jesus’ method of evaluation, the ordinary class student would have received Jesus’ approval for a modest achievement a long time before the ‘smart kid’ who put no real effort into using his talents and scoring a high mark. Do you see the difference? Although this is expressing the point a little simplistically.

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