Valley Commentary : 2 Schools of Thought Emerge From CLAS Debate : The exam is the first one which acknowledges that feelings are a part of critical thinking skills. Analyzing literature is not a clinical skill.

Teachers, administrators and students breathed a collective sigh of relief once the 10th-grade California Learning Assessment System exams were packed back into their boxes and shipped out of our school’s classroom until next year. That is, if there is a next year, considering all of the controversy surrounding CLAS.

I look with skepticism upon anything which takes two weeks away from an already fast-moving school year. We have great literature to discuss and write about. That’s the real business of English classes: reading great literature, discussing its impact on our world and ourselves, showing our ideas in writing.

But this is also what the English CLAS test is about, and this is why I believe the state should continue it. It is the first test that really tests what English classes ought to be doing. While teaching “to the test” sounds like poor pedagogy, good teachers do teach to the test because good teaching is directed by what students are expected to know.

If you believe your children need to know the difference between a dependent clause and an independent clause, then their achievement test should ask them to identify the two kinds of clauses. This can be simply done using a true-false or multiple-choice test.

If you believe your children need to know how to read critically, identify an author’s point of view, determine the author’s meaning, share their ideas with others and write about their interpretations, then the test must ask students to read, discuss and write. This can be done only using an assessment such as CLAS.

I teach English because as a student I had teachers who valued my verbal and written interpretations more than my ability to distinguish any of the various arcane rules of English. The real world has never asked me to explain what a mixed modifier is, but it has asked me to justify my ideas in verbal and written form.

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CLAS is the first statewide assessment program which asks our children to read with care and write with persuasion. The real world cares about how well we can make sense of complex ideas and explain or apply them in oral and written form. Teachers must teach students how to do this, and CLAS pushes them to do so.

Critics are wrong when they argue that CLAS’ primary function is to test feelings. However, feelings do serve a function on CLAS and in class.

CLAS asks students to react to the literature they read in all the ways I expect my students in my classes to respond to literature: intellectually, socially and emotionally. None of these responses function independently of the others.

When my 10th-graders reach the conclusion of John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” they react in various ways to the tragic conclusion. Some express shock, some dismay. Still others see it as inevitable and commend the character George for doing something that he had to do. Their initial reactions usually find their basis in their feelings, not in their intellect.

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Once my students begin writing about the novella, they use their initial emotional response to help determine the central issues in the text. The ideas of love, friendship and loyalty don’t arise out of a solely intellectual response to the work. Unless the reader gets emotionally attached to Lennie and George, Steinbeck’s most powerful ideas never arise.

Feelings form an integral part of a classroom where students read and analyze literature. Humans can’t read “Romeo and Juliet,” “Great Expectations” or “To Kill a Mockingbird” without experiencing some emotional connection. We get angry at the Motagues and Capulets for putting family pride above their children. We feel sadness for Pip as he pursues a love of coldness. We feel pride in Atticus’ noble defense of a black man doomed by hatred and ignorance.

The CLAS language arts test is the first California state test which acknowledges that feelings are a part of critical thinking skills. Analyzing literature is not a clinical skill where one diagrams a sentence, counts the number of passive-voice sentence constructions and records the answer on a computer form. Analyzing literature requires the use of feelings to get inside the author’s mind, determine meaning and critique style.

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CLAS’ primary function is not to test students’ feelings. It is to get students to use their feelings about the literature to develop critical analysis of the issues in the text. All Californians should want the next generation to think and write critically. The language arts CLAS pushes students to do this.

However, I fear that the voices of a powerful few will force education back to a multiple-choice mentality that relegates critical thinking to narrowing down your answer to A or B or C.

This will happen only if the state lets it happen.

California educators have developed a necessary and valid means of assessing students’ thinking, reading and writing skills.

However, the state built this test around secrecy. In so doing it has created a monster that can consume CLAS. Critics would see this demise as a victory for family values and back-to-basics education. I would see it as a tragedy.