I feel I owe a bit of an apology to my readers concerning my last entry. I am, by nature, usually a very quiet man, but the topic is something I feel passionately about. Consider the heat and emotion of my remarks in this respect. I can be very curmudgeonly at times... .
The thrust of the previous post was Test Anxiety. My feeling, borne out through observation, is that TA has contributed heavily to the current situation in American classrooms. By the constant stress of 'must pass' testing, and the cycle of constant failure in some of our students, we have grown an atmosphere of apathy. Apathy is a coping mechanism; if you don't care about something, then it can't hurt you. What follows is that if the test doesn't matter, then neither does the class. But many students do care, and the internal conflict that arises can also lead to disruptive situations and, eventually, to apathy.
I know that's a quick thumbnail sketch, and I don't have a lot of data from the academic literature to back this up. What I do have is long experience, hundreds of hours of discussion, and something that is being overlooked today-instinct. This brings me fully to Part II.
I like to watch a program on TV that highlights the adventures and process of a team of mechanical restoration specialists. They're a good crew, work together well, and perform the miraculous with seeming ease. Can I do what they do? No, I can't. I'm the kind of guy who can do simple home stuff, but if you ask me for a left handed spanner, I'll look for one. I suppose I could go to a series of classes to learn how to do complex machining, or electrical work, and it could be fun. Does that mean I could make a living at it? Not likely. I don't have the instinct of a mechanic or carpenter. What those restoration guys do is, to me, magic (defined as a technology I don't understand). Now look at the modern classroom.
For the last decade we've been trying to standardize curriculum nationwide. In many respects this is admirable, but it is flawed from the start. The expression 'too many cooks in the kitchen' is the closest I can come to what happens. Every stakeholder wants a place at the table in designing the standards, but whose ideas do we use? We go with a consensus most of the time, but within a committee, whose word gets the most weight? Personal and local politics creep in, or storm in, dominance games prevail, and consensus becomes less about agreement and more about bullying. And this doesn't happen in just one place.
The result of all this is what we have today-a mishmash of objectives, language that's either too vague or too precise, and an atmosphere that destroys creativity and promotes uniformity. "That's great," some may say, "since we're all on the same page." But, I ask, is everybody able to be on that page? One of the things that made us great was our diversity in skill and knowledge. Look back at our history carefully. Now look at societies that have passed on. One of the things that will doom a civilization is uniformity within the culture. Rome prospered as long as it adopted Greek learning and Egyptian engineering. When homogeneity was achieved, Rome got into trouble. Don't even get me started with the last 150 years in Germany. My point is that in every case, the society in question became too organized for it's own good, and wasn't able to meet the challenges that faced them. The most successful economy in the world today is China. They began to succeed only when they stepped away from Mao and embraced Wall Street and learned to accept individuality.
So here's my pondering for the day: how can we, as a nation, hope to prosper when we're using our schools as factories to produce people who all have the same knowledge, the same philosophies, and the same skills? Don't think this is happening? Read the new Common Core Standards. Then read Huxley's Brave New World.
I repeat: kids are not widgets and schools are not assembly lines.
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