OPPOSITION TO COMMON CORE GROWING AMONG TEACHERS?
Most of you are aware that I have nothing but disdain for the edubabblers and teacher certification process, not to mention the mind-numbing grip of standardized tests on the American "edgykayshun" establishment, and that I have nothing but admiration for the teachers trying to swim upstream against the flood standing in their way of teaching their students. They put up with an endless amount of twaddle of "methods" and "pedagogy" classes to obtain their "credential", often times in classes employing such kindergarten exercises that one cannot believe adults would be subjected to it merely to get that credential. And we've seen endless "reforms" that all end up doing the same old things: (1) costing more money to (2) administer more standardized tests to (3) an increasingly dumbed down student population who, in my experience, are far from unintelligent, but rather, simply not given challenging instruction because increasingly their teachers must "teach to the test," and perform countless hours in wasted activities attending time-wasting meetings...
... it's a miserable litany and any teacher who has been through it knows what I am talking about, from the elementary school teacher all the way up to the beleagured and besieged and always underpaid college adjunct professor (been there, done that!) dealing with fat and incompetent and vastly overpaid "administrators." If you think I'm wrong, just consider the fact that, within edubabble circles, the word "psychometry" means precisely the statistical process of standardized test measurements, and that within esotericism, psychometry means the "imprint" of an individual's soul on objects within their everyday environment, the goofiness in each case being symbolized by the use of the same term(though I strongly suspect much less goofiness in the latter case than the former).
Well, the revolt against all this educlaptrap, psychoblither, and methodmadness seems to be spreading a bit, as the following article suggests:
Teacher: No longer can I throw my students to the ‘testing wolves’
Allow me to quote the passages again:
"My life changed dramatically after a Facebook lament I wrote was published on The Answer Sheet last March. I was explaining how weary I was from the political addiction to mass standardized testing and how educationally abusive it had become to so many of the students in my care.
"Last spring, you wouldn’t find the fifth-graders in my Language Arts class reading as many rich, engaging pieces of literature as they had in the past or huddled over the same number of authentic projects as before. Why? Because I had to stop teaching to give them a Common Core Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) online sample test that would prepare them for the upcoming PARCC pilot pre-test which would then prepare them for the PARCC pilot post test – all while taking the official Ohio Achievement Tests. This amounted to three tests, each 2 ½ hours, in a single week, the scores of which would determine the academic track students would be placed on in middle school the following year.
"In addition to all of that, I had to stop their test prep lessons (also a load of fun) to take each class three floors down to our computer lab so they could take the Standardized Testing and Reporting (“STAR”) tests so graphs and charts could be made of their Student Growth Percentile (SGP) which would then provide quantitative evidence to suggest how these 10-year-olds would do on the “real” tests and also surmise the teacher’s (my) affect on their learning.
"Tests, tests, and more freakin’ tests."
Tests, tests, and more freakin tests. Indeed.
But that's just scratching the surface. I'm bold to suggest that the problem is (as it usually is) (1) the government and specifically the federal government, (2) the process of "certification" itself, (3) the silly notion that one must divide students into "grades" and shunt them around in classes lasting a mere 50 minutes, (4) a testing corporate cartel consisting of a few corporations involved in a pseudo-"scientific" enterprise whose roots are murky, whose results are murkier, and that they in turn serve (5) a power elite that does not want a culture and society of creative individuals nor to allow teachers to teach and professors to profess.
Want to change education, genuinely reform it? Get rid of EdDs, get rid of administrators in universities and colleges and restore faculty and academic disciplines to central prominence, get the federal government out of the business, throw out the dubious standardized tests, allow mastery of the discipline itself and not "certification" to qualify teachers.
Or, to put it in Ms. Neely-Randall's far more eloquent terms: " I am just a teacher and I just want to teach."
And here's the bad news, it's even worse - much much worse - than even she relates. As the old adage goes, the devil is in the details, and in this case, there's an assessment Asmodeus lurking like a worm at the heart of the common core.
See you on the flip side.
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The high school dropout could very well be the smartest kid these days. Yesterday in colorado teachers had a “sick out” upset over teacher pay and evaluations and also the new AP American history curriculum, where the history is now Internationalized American history, an American foreign policy that eschews the unilateral use of force over other country’s and our great power. Their views of course.
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf
Yes George Carlin was correct.
Must Viewing for Reversing the Problem: A New Renaissance!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H19V35SEXk
I like the “hamlet” interpretation.
But the part about Clinton being a leader? Fuhgeddaboudit!
Exactly!
Anybody thinks the education of our oligarchs is better than the swill they dish out to us proles dream on. They use to say certain students couldn’t point to a world map and show where the USA was or what date in history that certain events took place. I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that the students who said were our future leaders in all fields of our society. Only the brain dead need apply to lead in quotes are society and the world. You better hope that the schools you send your children to has a good school library and they know where it is. When the know where it use it the only way they will learn is by educating themselves. Anyway the USA education system whether public or private at least for us proles has always stunk. At least in the good old days books were affordable you could living on a modest budget put together a sizeable personal library not anymore. Our overlords have seen to that.
As the Saint of Critical Thinking, George Carlin once said,”They want people just smart enough to do the paperwork and run the machines.” Critical thinkers need not apply. It has been alleged that Autism due to Mercury laden vaccines,etc. is an attempt to produce cheaper workers. Let’s hear it for the Break-Away Biz Plan..
I must HAVE “psychoblither”. I’m taking it. You can’t stop me.
This subject gets us all Fired-Up!
It touches upon so many hot buttons.
The little ones of “our” time are collectively the children of us adults, of the time. And many of those adults are losing, or have lost the sense of what it means to be well informed. So how can they lead, if they have no sensed of where they are or of where they’ve been(history)? To even question who has the power to impose perspective in the interpretation of history?
I cannot but help think of slavery when touching upon this subject, Because that is in essence a future of those who have no education. I’m thinking of the message in the slave’s hunger strikes aboard slave ships: we will not be property; we will not be labor power; we will not let you eat us alive.. Herein was the alchemy of chains mutating, under the hard core pressure of resistance, into a “got soul” bond of community, a place of creative resistance[slave ship].
And one of the common sailors of that time, Edward Barlow thought that the proper social relations were being deranged by advancing competition, materialism, and “possessive individualism” of the age.
These “spirits” on those seas latter crystalized into “The declaration of Independence”. Our children need an education that teaches them to be those sons & daughter that can grow up to carry on that symbolic torch. It’s not taught in the schools of aristocrats, nor in the schools of the meritocracy. It is time for our children to be taught in the schools of democracy.
Dr. Farrell gets into this subject matter and I find myself nodding my head in agreement paragraph after paragraph.
The system is seemingly forcing a choice between learning or success.
There, I find myself feeling better, having put my 2 cents worth in.
Their retardation methods through the institutions, MSM, radiation, toxicity in the environment and in our food. Makes you wonder..is it for depopulation? Control? To forestall the children of the light? It Maybe
All of the above
When will the American demagogue arise and denounce this edubabble as the national security issue that it truly is? He/she could even point McCarthy-like accusations at communist subversives lurking in the corridors of power who are acting on the behalf of Russia and China in order to prep the soft underbelly of the United States for gutting.
In a parallel universe I once resided in, Dr. Farrell was the Secretary of Education and the public school teachers held class outside in nature and dressed in togas. The topological metaphor of the medium was as common to school children as the A,B,C’s. I suppose in our universe it would require some kind of apocalypse in order for the conditions to be right for Dr. Farrell to be elevated to the role of Secretary of Education. But I imagine that future Dr. Farrell would probably have scars and an eye patch and maybe a missing limb or two from post-apocalyptic gang wars between his crew of hermeticists versus crips, bloods, mormons, amish, and numerous bands of rag tag soldiers and postmen.
From birth to death we are basically held in an incubator and only so many break free.
Then the kids go to college and the system becomes a wealth vacuuming of the middle class and in some cases debt slavery. But there is enough of an upper middle class who have no problem paying the tuition bills that stabilizes the system.
Look the evidence for dumbing down is everywhere but most evident in the TV programming. For the first 13 years of schooling the thing you learn the most is how to sit.