Western culture may be compared to a lake fed by the stream of Hellenism, Christianity, science, and these contributions might
offer an extremely
valuable way of considering the conceptions of a life of reason, the principle of an ordered and intelligible world, the ideas of faith, of a personal God, of the absolute value of the human individual, the method of
observation and experiment, and the conception of empirical laws, as well as the doctrines of equality and of the brotherhood of man.
These
observations can help educators make
valuable inferences regarding students» mastery over skills, while
offering new ways to assess factors not easily measured on multiple - choice tests, such as problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, persistence, and creativity.