The editor:
Ever wonder why, despite all the reforms and “accountability” testing in our schools, our educational system seems no better than before?
Having been a public school teacher as well as professor of education for close to thirty-five years, I have a few insights to share on the subject.
1. The main difference between American education thirty years ago and today can be boiled down to this: Ask a teacher today to tell you what his/her job is and the answer is most likely to be something like, “My job is to teach math,” or science, or history, or English or but if you could go back and ask a teacher thirty years ago the same question he or she would probably answer, “My job is shape and mold human beings.”
2. Teachers, through no fault of their own, have lost the incentive to teach humanity to their students. Gradually our schools have come to place “getting a job” as their number one priority in preparing kids for the world. As such the schools have concentrated on the mechanics of the core curriculum and forgotten there is more to life than subject matter and a job.
3. The term “accountability” came into popular use about twenty years or so ago with taxpayers and politicians alike wanting to “get the most for their buck.” So reform movements centered around test scores. Why? Because test scores could “prove” your money was getting results. So far so good, but when it was found that the humanistic elements of the curriculum could not be easily tested for such things as initiative, leadership, ethics, enthusiasm, etc. (in short the things that make us human) -- instead of simply acknowledging that some things cannot be reduced to test numbers on a page and keeping these elements in the curriculum, it was decided to simply dump them and focus on what COULD be tested for.
4. Teachers are no longer inspirationalists or role models, rather they are blue-collar mechanics who prepare and teach soulless lesson plans, that is, when they can spare a minute from the almost continual prepping for standardized tests to “prove” they are accountable.
Schools have become little more than prep mills, devoting huge amounts of time to preparing students to take these tests. No wonder parents are concerned that there seems to be little learning going on scores, scores and more scores are all that count these days. And unfortunately those scores don’t really mean a whole lot when kids have been endlessly prepped right up to the moment they walk in to take the test. It isn’t a matter of who is learning more, it’s a matter of who’s better at prepping (cramming) them for the test.
5. You want better education? Ask yourself what you really want from schools. Do you want babysitters? Do you want schools to simply prepare your child to fill a job? Are high scores on standardized tests what you really desire? Or do you want institutions that help your child develop his/her humanity (as well as teaching some subject matter)?
Right now America has said it wants accountability. That’s exactly what you are getting. If you want something different you are going to have to admit that accountability has not succeeded. Until we change our priorities, the schools will remain prep mills and our kids and our society are going to be shortchanged.
Stephen S. Young
Clearfield
