Theme 1: Conflicting Notions of the Purposes of Schooling

I would argue there is one phrase and one phrase along that can instantly makes part of teacher die inside (sorry for the dramatics, but I know this happens to me a lot) and that phrase is: Standardized Testing.   The phrase itself can cut your soul, raise your blood pressure, and yet it is one of the most common phrases in the educational world.  

I was pleasantly surprised to see that both Labaree and Noddings argue the damage that standardized testing has created, as well as explain the history from which this ugly education giant emerged.   I always wondered why standardized testing became the common practice and although I knew it stemmed from the idea of economy, I didn’t realize that it is pushing a fatal form of equity for our students.  Personally, my students are testing for the at least ACT 3x in school before they take the real deal in March.  The results—the kids don’t care.  They don’t try.  They are exhausted and apathetic.  And who can blame them.

This also goes along with Noddings’ claim of how schools “value only academic achievement” (p. 443) and how this related to the bigger issue of economy and well as equity.  I don’t want to argue that one job is more academic than another, because I think that there is a set of “academics” that is uniquely different for every job field out there.  For instance, I may have a well versed English academic background, but my knowledge of car repair or computer designing is zilch.  Noddings made me realize that our definition of “academic” has been skewed and too many people think that job fields such as car repair or beauty school are not academic.  But the fact is they are. Especially because the definition of academic is related to education, or getting an education within _______.  As long as a student is learning, and being educated on how to become a mechanic, or a beautician, they are being academic—but in a different way.

The problem really is our school wants to give every student the same education (thus, the same standardize test).  We want all of our students to be the same type of academic; therefore, we have created a set standard of what academic is with core classes like English, Math, Science, and Social Studies.  My school has electives, but they are not consider “academic. ”  Even the term “elective” tends to diminish their integrity. The kid taking choir, parenting, or culinary arts is not consider as “bright” as the student taking AP Literature or Biology.

It all comes back to this statement: “Everyone needs to equal.”  But the truth is that is not possible.  While tracking is another dirty word in education, I think the idea of offering different career tracks, with different academic classes within those tracks is a better idea, and could help this huge economy crisis schools get blamed for.  I know there are valid dangers with tracking, but students are different.  Students also will pick different careers, and they need an education that matches that.  Maybe then we will see more happy students at school.  Maybe then, we will see less students drop out because they don’t see the value in “learning this algebra that they will never use again.” 

Resources:

If you have never seen this video by Sir Ken Robinson, it touches on so many of the issues that we have read about in the two articles this week.  I love his discussion of the economy and how education reform is constantly revolving around the economy issues.  It also touches on the idea of teaching cultural identity to students, much like Labaree's article talked about schools teaching citizenship to our students.  I also think this helps add onto another consequence of keeping the old educational systems, and the issues of tracking, and who is "smart, academics" vs. who is not. 

 Another discussion brought up is the idea that kids have lost their creative vibe, and I think that connects back to the concerns about if are students are happy from Noddings, as well as students who think that "what matters most is not the knowledge they learn in school but the credentials they acquire there" (p. 56).  Too many of our students have learned how to "play" school, or play the educational system. Also, too many students are unhappy because they don't have the chance to be creative, or explore other creative fields of learning.  There is so much great stuff in this video, I could keep going, but you need to watch it for yourself.

Harrison Bergeron Full Text

This is the English teacher in me, but I had to add this fictional story about "making everyone equal."  The consequences remind me of what has happened in our school systems and the fact is the way we view and incorporate equality into the school systems is actually doing more harm and good, just like what we see in this story.