« Stone Walls and Assessment I

Stone Walls and Assessment  I -

One’s life events should always inform one’s thinking, or so it seems.

This past summer, I spent a few weeks at the Kingston house, where my daughter lives now. It’s the place my parents owned and the place that I grew up. I’ve managed to hold onto the property for 40 years.

As life goes on, things need improvement, and several years ago, we had to install a new septic system. In doing so, the contracts rather destroyed a stone wall. Life goes on.

But this summer, my task was to rebuild the wall, the same wall I had build some 50 years ago. I did that over three weeks.

But in that process, I had to think about assessment.

No one teaches field stone wall building in high school. There’s no academic test. No academic test would be appropriate - you can only assess success by doing.

And so I researched a bit, and found that there is in fact a certification agency for stone wall building - The Dry Stone Conservancy. ([https://www.drystone.org/career/level/])

And yes, they do assess success, and it does happen “by doing.”

Not all assessment happens by testing. Testing is but one of the many methods of assessment.

Dewey wrote a great deal about "learning by doing."  Is this a case of learning by doing?