Freedom To Learn is an interesting blog written by psychologist Peter Gray about educating and evaluating children in our society.  I'm fascinated to read his ideas:

"...it is not surprising to discover that the questions that developmental psychologist attempt to answer in their research are largely school-related questions. Many of the questions are explicitly about school lessons; they have to do, for example, with ways of teaching reading or math. But even questions that are not so obviously about schooling are strongly affected by the school paradigm. They have to do with the effects, on children, of structured situations set up for them by adults, in controlled settings where the choices of what to do are severely limited. That, by itself, pretty much rules out the study of real play or curiosity.
There is nothing nefarious about any of this. These are honest researchers trying to study what they and others around them see as important. The result, though, is an extraordinarily biased and narrow view of the human nature of children..."