© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “Shouldn’t
these early grades be a time to discover, play, and explore? ... but I guess
that doesn’t fit into our testing obsession.” Teacher Ginger Rose Fox
Ask most politicians the purpose of
education and you get, “Score well on the tests.” Sadly, that is not what our public
schools should spend their time on, rather, they should develop lifelong
learners. This is done by using curiosity to bolster learning behaviors.
The testing obsession is driven by
money and power for the leaders of public schools, not by research or best
practices. Our country has many times the number of educational administrators
as is needed for effective schools because the administrators have taken over
the schools.
To give themselves power and money
they created a testing society where students spend most of their time preparing
for and taking tests to evaluate teachers and schools. There is no educational value
of these activities for the students. It serves to disenfranchise them from
real learning activities.
What if we stopped testing so much
and just used that extra time for things like teaching? First thing that would
happen is the educational power brokers and political leaders would lose power
and money. That is what is driving our current educational testing obsession.
What is education? Ask most
administrators and you get things like: to prepare students to go to college.
Wrong. Education is the concentration of curiosity such that literate and numerate
resources are acquired by students to satisfy that curiosity.
We have put accountants and
political pushers in charge of our public schools and they get worse and worse because
the unstated goals of the schools are now to satisfy political influences. The
first destruction of education was in kindergarten.
That grade was used to bring
students into public schools in a way that the students found enjoyable and
intellectually stimulating. So there was lots of play and fun activities. But
no longer. Kindergarten has been destroyed by an out-of-control educational
administration that does not want students enjoying themselves.
Want to see which administrator to
fire or politician to vote out of office: ask if students should enjoy being in
public school? Get rid of everyone who says, “They should not.”
To educate means to give reason for
developing literacy and numeracy. Administrators say students will do so or be
punished along with their teacher. The schools now spend their time
intimidating teachers. Students only gain the ability to take tests and little
else.
Take a clear look at schools
spending all of their time on accountability tests which students have no
interest in and you will see the destruction of our public schools. Parents don’t
know what to do. The law says the students have to go even when they say they
hate school. Most parents can’t home school so they turn a blind eye to the
abuse of their children. The media does not know either. Test scores are easy
to report.
Public schools shouldn’t operate on
a top-down model where teachers have little or no say in the instructional
activities. Teachers in public schools are told that they must obey or lose
their job.
When students first go to school they
are curious about almost everything but curiosity is beaten out of them by all but
the few teachers who have underground instructional styles to cope with the obsession
of testing.
Spiders and snakes and a thousand
other things are interesting but they are not on the test so all but the
stoutest teachers do exactly what the administrators demand. If administrators
demanded they cut their students in two with a butter knife, many of today’s
teachers would do so to save their job.
Our society needs curiosity based
schools that develop lifelong learners, not political castles where educators
get rich on the backs of students not being properly served. Teachers need to
be in charge, not highly paid administrators feathering their nests. A major change
is needed.
Email: drswickard@comcast.net
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