One size does not fit all: Sweeping education-reform rhetoric fails with mandate to steer every child to college
Ohanian Comment:
Phoneme segmentation fluency,
Hallowed be thy name.
Happiness no longer
In anybody's lesson plan.
Nor knowledge.
Data is all.
Look up the synonym for data
And you get “poop sheet.”
Shakespeare said
The poop was beaten gold.
Send Education Trust the recipe.
The Business Roundtable
Education Trust, Bill Gates,
And New York Times editorial agree:
If you can’t count it,
It doesn’t count.
Where’s the measurement device
For CEOs, politicos, media pundits,
Parents, neighbors, mothers-in-law?
What counts for
Actuaries, admen, airline attendants, archeologists, astrologers, auto mechanics,
Bakers, bankers, baccarat dealers, Bingo callers, boatswains
Candlestick makers, cardiologists, cartographers, chimney sweeps, clergymen,
Data miners, dentists, die cutters, door hangers, drafters, drapers, drummers,
Economists, editorialists, electricians, embroiderers, escorts, euphemists,
Farmers, fingerprint technologists, firemen, flagpole sitters, florists, forklift operators,
Gardeners, gazebo builders, glass blowers, graphic designers, grocery baggers
Handwriting experts, handicappers, home health aides, hotel clerks, hypnotists,
Ice cream makers, insulators, insurance agents, interior decorators
Jacks-of-all-trades, janitors, jewelers, journalists, judo instructors,
Kennel operators, keno runners, kitchen remodelers, knife sharpeners,
Labor organizers, lab technicians, landscapers, lawyers, legal secretaries, loggers,
Machinists, magicians, manicurists, milliners, ministers, morticians, musicians,
Naturopaths, necromancers, nuclear engineers, nursing home owners, nutritionists
Occupational therapists, oceanographers, oil tycoons, optometric technicians, orderlies,
Pest controllers, pharmacists, pianists, plumbers, pole climbing instructors, psychiatrists, puppeteers,
Quarry miners, quick draw artists, quilters, quiz show hosts,
Radiologists, realtors, recruiters, riggers, roofers, rubber stampers, rubbish removers,
Security guards, software engineers, sportscasters, statisticians, stockbrokers, surgeons,
Tattooers, taxi drivers, taxi dancers, taxidermists, telemarketers, tree surgeons, tutors,
Umpires, upholsterers, urban planners, urologists, used car dealers,
Ventriloquist, veterinarians, videographers, violinists, vivisectionists,
Wedding planners, wait staff, welders, Windows Explorer technicians, window washers
X-Ray technicians, xylophonists
Yacht builders, yeomen, yoga instructors, yurt builders, yes-men,
Zeppelin inspectors, zitherists, zookeepers, and Zoroastrians?
We only test the young.
Test ‘em until they move on
To the real world
Or are broken by the Standardisto hammer
Standards are the hammer the corporate-politico-media cartel uses
To crush children
Into submission,
Trumpeting with each blow
They’ve hit the nail on the head.
Media pundits call it cultural transformation;
Teachers call it the destruction of a generation.
It is not the business of eight-year-olds to search for scatological humor in their kill drill.
--from "Spring," When Childhood Collides with NCLB
Available from:
VSSE
P. O. Box 26
Charlotte, VT 05445
$8.95
by Jurgen Herbst
For a year now, we have listened to appeals to confront the problems of the nation's schools.
"Tough Choices or Tough Times," the report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, defined the challenge before us: "We do not need new programs, and we need less money than one might think. The one thing that is indispensable is a new system. The problem is not with our educators. It is with the system in which they work."
These words were greeted with enthusiasm by Gov. Bill Ritter and were supposed to guide the deliberations and inform the recommendations of his task force on education. Its assignment, we were led to believe, was not to reform the existing education system, but to replace it with a new one.
No such recommendations have been forthcoming. Instead Colorado schools are asked to keep doing what they have been doing but to make sure that all their students are prepared for college. As Rona Wilensky has pointed out recently in The Denver Post, Gov. Ritter's Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids "reflects confused thinking about the difference between preparing all kids for post-secondary education and preparing all kids for college classes." As she illustrates: "The writing skills needed in freshman English are not the same skills needed in training programs to be a nursing assistant," and, "the math skills needed for college algebra are not the ones needed in a commercial art program."
But this observation does not seem to have been acknowledged by the legislature, which is now debating whether to replace the CSAP tests with course examinations or the ACT college entrance test. Again, the emphasis is on testing for college admission, and the tests will be imposed on all students, whether or not they intend to enter college. The debate demonstrates, with few exceptions among the legislators, an insistence on sameness or uniformity that is curious, to say the least, in a society that prides itself on democratic multiplicity and freedoms.
What's wrong with this "one size fits all" approach? It ignores the one plain and undisputable fact that individuals, even school kids, are different, are born with different gifts, cherish different ambitions, set different goals for themselves. If they are to play their active part in education, students have to be accorded a role not as passive recipients of educational goods but as curious, questioning inquirers. And teachers as true educators will respond to the interests of their students with imagination and enthusiasm and lead them to become imaginative, inquiring individuals. They will inform students of options and let them know that teachers will support them in their self-chosen goals without insisting that students must follow a course a school prescribes for them.
There is evidence that for some individuals, an emphasis on a preferred educational goal - in this case on college preparation - is harmful and leads to alienation and dropping out of school. And it is not unreasonable to suspect that quite a few of the high number of Americans incarcerated in prisons and jails - one in 100 American adults, as we just learned - are recruited from those unfortunates whose needs were ignored in school. These are the victims of a school system which Tough Choices or Tough Times implored us to replace. Colorado seems not to have paid attention.
Jurgen Herbst is professor emeritus of educational policy studies and history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a member emeritus of the National Academy of Education. He lives in Durango.
— Jurgen Herbst
Durango Herald
2008-03-23
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