A Blind Man’s Ditch: Suppression of the Imagination in the Quest for Test Scores

Describes how, giving an exam that included working with uncontextualized poetry, a teacher inadvertently discovered that the least accomplished students were the biggest risk-takers; the so-called best students were ironically self-limited by their own drive to succeed; tracking only encouraged this lack of risk-taking; and the less good students had something to offer to critical discussion in the classroom.