Social Knowing

In the chapter entitled "Social Knowing," we see that today students behave differently. Students are more socially involved in the sense that they are emailing each other, instant messaging (IM’ing) each other, studying together, etc... Knowing this makes me wonder if tests will be given to groups rather than to individuals. I agree with Weinberger’s statement, “increased emphasis on testing measurement is anti-social learning.” Students get turned off to so much testing. They are left feeling anxious, aggravated, and bored. All the testing leaves them with an “I don’t care” attitude, which is where we see a decline in grades. This should tell us that we need to get back to “Social Learning.”
Today kids IM each other and discuss their homework, but turn it in and get graded individually. If we know that they participate in these type activities, why don’t we work with them? Home schooling in theory permits this, though the social aspect may be difficult. Our jobs as educators and parents are to want to make children curious about the world. Taking core classes, even in good schools turns high school students off as the exams testing large classes chases away the appeal of interesting subjects. The web is more interesting than traditional media.
On behalf of disciplines: nobody thinks the world divides into categories and that's that, but there are distinctions that should be made. If you are studying science, you need to know that it differs from economics. It's not that everything is chaotic, but that we are able to find what the ways of organizing and clustering are that make sense without being stuck with decisions made by experts for us that are meant to apply in all cases.