© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “It is a
miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Albert Einstein
To really learn using literacy and
numeracy the student must perceive an internal need for those abilities. This
is where higher order thinking skills develop. But these activities are on the
decline because of testing-fixated administrators.
America has gone on a journey to
measure education which is immeasurable for administrators fixated on accountability.
The core of education: curiosity, is being ignored so that the administrative testing
mission can be achieved.
Example: lately there is a push to
constrain teacher absences even when teachers are sick. New Mexico reportedly
saved three million dollars last year by strong-arming teachers to come to
school even when sick and therefore not use substitute teachers. How does
having a teacher with active pneumonia in school help anything?
An army of armchair accountants in
the public schools are counting things to be able to say which schools are good
or not. They count teacher absences and what parents answer on surveys and how
the bulletin boards look and which bubbles children mark on tests.
It’s a scam and most people in
education realize that public school education has been hijacked by
administrators intent only upon gaining power and money. They are enabled by
politicians only intent on gaining power and money. If America had enemies,
what would they do different in our public schools? Nothing! They are being
destroyed as if an enemy were intent on their destruction.
When I judge public schools, I look
for active curiosity in that school’s students. If they sit in mind-numbing
silence preparing for an endless supply of mind-numbing tests, they are
intellectually dead. Mostly, the testing-fixated administrators cause the
intellectual deaths of the school’s students.
Very active student led classrooms
are run by teachers who give lots of items of curiosity to the class and direct
gently the students to uses of literacy and numeracy. These isn’t one model of
a curiosity based classroom, it depends on the students that year in that
classroom not the curriculum directors.
Teachers must be agile to find what
each year’s students find interesting and tie it back to the need for literacy
and numeracy. It can be done but not in schools dominated by top-down testing
fixated administrators.
Those administrators who live by the
constant use of tests are trying to measure the immeasurable when it comes to
education. They focus on tests to induce teachers to juke the system by having
students study for the accountability tests rather than spending their time on
learning activities.
One of the most stressful jobs is being
a bus driver since there is a time schedule but the driver cannot control the
traffic. Likewise, teachers are put in a system where curiosity, the core of
learning is removed yet their job evaluation is put on testing to which the
students have no interest. Very stressful.
I would like to see schools return
to a curiosity based curriculum where there are many activities designed to
stimulate student curiosity. Return Art and Music to prominence along with
having an active garden in each school tended by students. They will plan and direct
the growth then harvest and use the products.
Also, I think that elementary school
in the fourth grade should start teaching students to fly using flight
simulators. It stimulates geometry and percentages and the language of flight.
I also think a virtual zoo should be at every school so that teachers can see
which animals capture the attention of their students.
We must do away with the notion that
if students are happy, they are somehow not getting a good education. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
Walt Disney wrote, “We keep moving
forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and
curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” If this current generation of
administrators kill the curiosity in our young people, what will be our nation’s
future? Very bleak.
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