One of the most fascinating things about people is how they can ignore things when they don't fit their beliefs. I think everyone does this to a certain extent. I still do. With the dawn of the Internet, it is easy now to find information that completely reinforces our own world view.
From this myopia comes the Law of Unintended Consequences, or as I like to call it, The Other Side of the Coin. No choice in life is a certain thing but some people think it is because they choose not to see the other side of the coin. For example:
No Child Left Behind. When it was written I at first liked the idea. Let's put down some standards for students to measure up to. Encourage success, and punish failure. Sounds good.
Of course there are many problems with this. Just the name itself is loaded with problems. No Child Left Behind indicates that all children will do equally well and nobody will fail (aka be left behind). The problem is when you look at the other side of the coin. If you want all children to do equally well then you have to hold back the high achievers too. Enforcing this standardization on everyone is a left over from the factory model education system. Teachers are handcuffed to Teaching to the Test.
The only skill the students will really have after they graduate is a skill of taking standardized tests.
So here is my radical idea. Disband the Department of Education entirely. Let states try 50 different approaches to education and see what happens. Let kids excel and provide guidance to help them get there. Over time the best approaches will become clear and will then be passed around to other schools. What makes this country great is American Ingenuity, not government.
Most critically, make sure from an early age young kid's native gifts are recognized and nurtured before the factory school beats it out of them. So who's with me?
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ME!! I am with you 100% I too was for no child left behind when I got my degree about 15 years ago. I went into education because I could see that teachers had no idea how to handle my kids that all had ADD or ADHD. But, now that I see how testing and making the AYP wrings the fun out of school, it just makes me sad. I think that's why I love teaching drama so much. It's a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteI taught AP Economics for the past three years and I can tell you that we create a product. On day one I tell the kids that they represent a dollar sign to the school. It's paid out at the end of each quarter if they attend school. If they attend better than 93% of the time, the school gets money, not the student. The business of schools is amazing. We are given all this money to create a product, but the beuacracy of it all gets in the way. If allowed I believe teachers would create a good product, but instead I believe we create a defective product 20-30% of the time. Unlike Toyota we can't recall these students once they've left the showroom. They are off to fend for themselves with an inadequate education against poor, hungry people from different countries. The Educational System has become the car industry and their is no bail out for the future.
ReplyDeleteWow! I really only wanted to respond to a part of this, but then I couldn’t decide which one. So, here it goes. You are absolutely right about people ignoring things that don’t go with their beliefs. So many people call themselves believers of ABC and supporters of XYZ, but then they think they can just go through the aisles and only put in their carts the things that are easiest to do. And, you are absolutely right, we all do it!
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew the solution to the problem with education in our country. I know that comparing students to one another is not always the answer as they have different backgrounds and therefore different experiences, exposures, resources, etc.
As far as 50 different approaches….I believe (I do not know for sure) that states have some creative licensure to their approaches to teaching the national standards. What works best???? Who knows? How do we measure success??? There are many countries whose educational systems are better than ours; why don’t we just emulate those systems?
I wish there were just one answer.
@Andrew - I totally agree that it is easier than ever to find the information that satisfies and agrees with your view on any subject. You can convince yourself that almost anything is true. One of the more important skills that I try to teach my children is to be objective and skeptical when you are consuming information. This is an elemental rule when consuming medical research as well. It's always important to know who has a vested interest in the results.
ReplyDeleteThe rule of unintended consequences runs through almost all facets of life where governing forces exist. You've given a great example with the school system. Did you know that the same thing happens in hospitals? In order to meet standards set by the government agencies, which are very well intentioned, we are seeing more and more focus on "passing the test" instead of taking care of the patient. Nurses are pulled into positions that take them away from the bedside so that the records can be examined and scrubbed, the guilty punished, and the innocent are really just the guilty that haven't been caught yet. So, I have to strongly agree that what made America great was not government control, but creativity, ingenuity and the "melting pot" mentality which took everything in, adopting the best features of any culture, and making it a part of the whole.
What a great post Andrew:). I agree that a belief system causes a person to hold strong to the side they are putting their faith in and the individuals in congress who believe in NCLB are blinded by their ambition to save public education or to save children from being left behind. There are huge problems with the bill and no one in "Charge" wants to admit that the venture is a failure and is causing schools to be an unwelcoming place for students and Teachers.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I sometimes fell like getting out of education because of the politics. I love kids. Obviously, I am an art teacher and I want to have a fun loving atmosphere free from judgement and full of self expression. This becomes very hard when the atmosphere in the school is high stress, no fun, pass the test or the state is taking over. The fear is squelching the teachers ability to be a creative and fun learning mentor to these children.
School should be an awesome fun place that kids love to explore and discover new things like in children's museums. Unfortunately the schools I have been within are more like a pressure cooker with 9 day old pea soup with a off smell. Kids don't want to go and the teachers are tired. I have to guess that this was not the vision congress had in mind when they passed NCLB.
Hey Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI definitely like the idea of disbanding the Department of Education at the federal level. It’s just another federal bureaucracy! But, I don’t think that will solve the problem. The problem is systemic. It runs throughout the education system down to the local administration and even the teachers. I spent over 25 years in corporate IT. I’ve seen how old ways of doing business are really hard to change. That’s where education is today. And, because it is managed by politicos, change is going to be based on who has the most political influence with the local school board and the D of E’s at state and federal level.
Gifted programs aren’t for gifted students, they are for students whose parents can pay a psychologist to “diagnose” them as gifted so their parents can brag and the students don’t go to less effective schools.
The goals of schools (high school where I teach) are to graduate as many students as possible, get high scores on the tests that grade the schools and keep their seat counts as high as possible. Then, they want to keep parents happy. Then, they don’t want any incidents that gain the administration notoriety. And finally, they hope the students learn something but don’t put much effort other than lip service into how much the students learn.
I teach at Florida Virtual School. I think online schools are going to be the savior for motivated and gifted students. They can excel without the distractions of the traditional school. It is also a great benefit to students who struggle but really care about their education and want to learn. So, Andrew, there is hope for the good students and the struggling students. Will the establishments allow it to happen?
Bill Wallace