My wife says I am crabby…so I apologize ahead of time…I know that many of you teach at progressive schools, send your kids to progressive schools, or don’t send your kids to school at all…
Yesterday I had a meeting after school. It was the type of meeting that I suppose is taking place at schools across the country. We need to improve on three sections of our state testing so we are going to do more test prep on those three sections. First we have to improve on our writing prompts. The answer is to not have kids do more authentic writing or have them do more writing that they might enjoy, but to standardize the prompts across the district so that every kid gets accessed on the same prompt. Then we have to improve self to text connections. The answer is not to create units that connect to students’ live and reading material that connects with their lives, but to give them standardized reading assignments and force them to make a connection with whatever is read. Finally we have to improve reading comprehension. We are not going to help them by letting them read material they might enjoy, or making sure the have the proper background to understand and make connections to what they read, we are simply going to give them standardized sections of text to read and…well, frankly I don’t know what we are going to do. Maybe that was the one in which we were suppose to take sections of the history text and blank out words and have them guess what word we removed.
I got a little upset about how I and everyone above me just let all this cheap teaching run into our classrooms. Everyone just says yes to the person above them. For the most part, I find that teachers don’t have a problem with the test prep, their problem is wanting more time to complete the required extra testing.
After a while of feeling pathetic and powerless, I decided to shift the blame. I decide to start blaming businesses who sit idle on the sidelines as their future workers are dumbed down. Why wouldn’t businesses want the very best employees? Why don’t the CEOs complain lobby Congress about schools schools doing more test prep and killing kids motivation, curiosity, creativity, and communication and collaboration skills. Why not….
Thoughts then shifted to who benefits from having independent, empowered, critical thinking kids? Or better yet, ask the question that is asked before every action the government takes from deciding to write the Declaration of Independence to Social Security–What current part of the population will make more money? Schools would have all sorts of people questioning what they do, choosing to not participate in waste of time homework or test prep lessons that clearly have no link to their future. Why would schools want to lose control and all sorts of specialists that design all of our wonderful testing programs and staff members hired to convince us that the current path is the right one. Businesses need a dumbed down population so that they can convince them to buy clothes based on a logo, spend hours watching TV, eat their family dinners at fast food joints, and go to the movies and put down $10 to watch Jackass.
The fact is that school does not totally dumb down everyone. There are enough kids who graduate and can fill the cogs of the machines at the highest level. That leaves a whole lot of people left to buy all the stuff we are convinced we need.
I was speaking to a couple of doctors who immigrated from Europe. They have a very unique take on the whole health care debate going on. Basically they said that any type of reform will fail. It is not the system that is put in place that will help people, it will have to be a change in our cultural beliefs. No matter what system we create, it will be based on our cultural biases and ideals, most of which are at odds with creating a health care system that works. Maybe that is why schools have not changed in 10os of years, because they are the mirror of our culture, our belief systems, reinforcing our cultural memes. Yes the tools we use have changed, occupations have changed, and our cities have changed, but at the core is still the same cultural values driving those superficial changes.
As I wander through life the last couple of years, I do wonder how possible “school change” really is. There are scattered people who support a changes, but in a system as big as mine I don’t even know if I can count as many people as fingers on one hand missing three fingers who would support a system wide paradigm change. What is happening in schools matches our cultural expectations and ideals. Technology based social networks do connect folks across the world that are interested in changing education, but I think it has given many the false sense of a movement. There is no movement where I live. I live in one of the richest states, up the road from one of the worlds greatest universities, and plenty of high tech businesses driving the economy. There is no movement here for change.
So yea, pretty depressing post right? But the bright spot is it has me thinking about how to change schools without focusing on the schools. What part of our culture can be worked on so that school change becomes an automatic? What would have to change so that people would just simply no longer put up with the current system? Would we be more effective putting our energy somewhere else?
9 responses so far ↓
What are the American cultural values that you feel are impeding true learning in our schools (or improvements in healthcare)?
I agree that businesses should be advocating for education but I question giving up on blaming schools. I feel like individual schools are the ones who come up with the idea of drilling reading and writing without purpose or connection. All of the skills you listed that students need to raise their scores in are truly critical skills.
It seems as if the standards in place are correct. My concern is in the quality of the tests themselves. I’m also not saying that standardized tests should be removed, but believe improvement should be a primary concern.
Why do the individual schools think that forcing students to read just anything and make *personal* connections to it will actually help students? Why can’t administrators see past the ends of their noses in this respect?
Students with higher level critical thinking skills (plus reading and writing naturally) WILL do better on the tests. Critical thinking will at the very least improve students’ abilities to make educated guesses. Whether we like it or not, that can certainly be a useful life skill.
Hmm. I’m off on tangents. Anyway, thanks for the thoughtprovoking post! I always love reading your perspective!
Candace
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Paul Bogush Reply:
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I suppose you could look at schools as mirrors of our culture, or producers of culture. I tend to fall on the side of mirrors.
I also don’t think we should remove blame from the schools, but is there something easier to “change” first then our schools would naturally follow?
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Paul,
I am seeing more and more posts about just what you are reflecting on. I think that schools are the last thing in society to change. Most educators truly care about the students. It is a very difficult thing however to be a force of change within a district when you see that the direction that things are going are not benefiting the students, the community or the world as a whole. I know that many very innovative, enthusiastic, knowledgeable teachers are leaving education. The reasons are many- no freedom, lack of support from administration and community, frustrations because of the emphasis on test performance and lack of time to truly meet the needs of their students. There is no easy solution to any of this. Technology integration is a dream- not a reality. We are fooling ourselves as educators if we think otherwise
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I always think of this issue when people compare us to Asian schools, considering how well their students perform. Even if we exactly imitated everything their schools do, the results would not be the same. The Asian culture values education and hard work over talent. In America, students think you’re either born smart or you’re not. So if they aren’t smart, there is no point to work hard and improve. A lot of students also assume that if education doesn’t work for them, they can become successful through reality tv or other such unstable professions. Also, education is an honor and a privilege in other countries, even a luxury. Here it is available to anyone and as everyone knows, anything in mass supply begins to lose it’s value.
I think one possible solution is to shift our focus to hard work and bettering yourself rather than gifts and talents. Everyone can make progress. Everyone can make changes and improve.
Not everyone can achieve 100%, as all NCLB fans know…
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Well, I agree with you. Change isn’t going to happen, at least not to school districts. As you said, its in our culture. We are not really interested in quality, not in manufacturing, (with very few exceptions), and not in education.
Unfortunately, we have this silly idea that testing improves quality when all it really does is create defects — then we spend lots of time trying to fix defects instead of really concentrating on real system wide improvement.
What a waste of time, money, and more importantly lives of future citizens.
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Amen! I think it’s okay to get a little crabby once in a while! I agree with you that schools will not change because they do reflect our culture. When I read about a local school district where parents are mad because they are inconvenienced with childcare issues and expenses because kids get out a few hours early so teachers have some meeting time that doesn’t fall after school hours I get really crabby! I went to college to be a teacher, not your child’s babysitter. But that’s what many expect of the schools. We should be open when they want us to be, we shoud teach what they think is appropriate and reflects their beliefs, we should bend over backwards for every kid at the expense of our own children at home. And if they don’t like what we do, it is okay to bash us in the media. Wow! I’ve got to stop hanging out with you. I’m getting crabby right now:)
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I am curious do you home school/ unschool your children? What choice have you made with all the ideas you have re: school? Maybe my question is too personal? So curious….
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Paul Bogush Reply:
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:19 am
We unschooled up to the fourth grade. That experience and reading probably every author that ever wrote anything on unschooling really opened my eyes and heavily influences what I do in the classroom.
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Thanks for the reply. I enjoy following you on twitter, and reading your blog. One of my dearest friends is unschooling her two, 6, and 4. And I am learning lots about education through twitter. I have a boy in 1st grade, in public school. Did your kids enter an alternative school in 4th grade? And do they enjoy school now?
Your classroom kids are real lucky to have you as a teacher/ facilitator.
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