Drone

A popular thing to complain about is our education system. It is an easy target as it really does have a lot of issues that need to be fixed. However, to fix it we first need to understand exactly what needs fixing and why. The number one thing that needs to be fixed will allow other fixes to happen, but if it is not fixed will prevent any other fix from ever working at all.

What is this big fix? Non-educators need to shut up, step aside, and stay out of the policymaking/decision/evaluation picture.  Administration is filled with people with no teaching experience who, for whatever reason, feel that their $0.02 is invaluable and therefore must be heard. The thing is, teaching is a professional position that takes years of training, much like a doctor, and yet every nitwit who has gone though school believes that they know all there is to know about teaching (after all, they have been taught!) And heaven forbid these people have a child; this engenders the feeling that they have been touched by the hand of god and know everything there is to know about how to educate children. I’m sorry to break it to everyone so bluntly, but just because you can successfully fuck does not make you a successful educator, or even a successful parent. It would be the same as going to the doctor’s office with a fever, chills, aches, and congestion, and saying, “Doc, I know what you and the test results are saying, but I’m telling you that I don’t have the flu, it’s just hemorrhoids. I know because I have had a cold before.” This may sound harsh, but the fact is that interference from well-meaning but clueless individuals cause more harm to our educational system than most anything else.

More harm, that is, except for the politicians; politicians who have no idea of what is actually involved in classroom but know what their wealthy donors want. They want a ready and steady workforce that is just educated enough to do the job, but unburdened with the ability to think for themselves. To achieve this, they need a sufficient education system to impart the bare working skills and the impression that the student is able to freely think (thus keeping them happy), but without actually teaching true critical thought or skills to excel in the workplace. Businesses want to train specific skills and efficiency techniques once the workers have been hired and assessed. If the ability to think critically was actually taught, then the ways that businesses, government, and those of wealth and power work harder at keeping an unofficial slave culture alive rather than actually improving the country and its people would be apparent to all, rather than just a fortunate few.

Now, many may think that this is just bitter rhetoric, but it isn’t. Just take a look at the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). It is an absolutely fantastic slogan and the mouth-breathers sing its praises. However, if you actually know anything about effective education and look at NCLB critically, then you will see that it is another trap for the masses.

So what does the act say it offers versus what it actually offers? First, it purports to offer teacher, school, and student accountability. Great; there should be accountability from each of these. But what it actually offers is a biased system to punish those who fail to conform to a normality dictated by politicians as well as those who just fail. Does it offer any way to assist those who are just failing or to make them more likely to succeed? No. In fact, under NCLB guidelines, teachers who fail will be fired and schools that fail will be shut down, causing class sizes to become even greater than their already over-capacity status. No academic class should ever at any time be more than 20 students, yet it is not uncommon to have classes with 30 to 45 and sometimes even more per academic class. Is there any incentive for meeting the “standards” set by NCLB? Only that you don’t get fired.

Which brings us to the next failing of NCLB: Standards. The promoted purpose after accountability is to set standards. Again, this sounds reasonable enough to most. But then what needs to be examined is who determines the standards and what essential programs are going to be sacrificed in order to focus on these standards. There is a focus on core subjects; math, science, language arts. Without doubt, these are essential subjects, but they can’t be focused on solely at the expense of subjects like:

 PE, which helps keep the body healthy and therefore the mind, which is a proven fact.

Music, which helps with math and science.

Theater Arts, which help in language arts and science.

Art, which helps with science and math.

And the list goes on, but more than the aid that these subjects offer to the “core” is the help they offer to the student and the school. These subjects help provide an emotional connection and personal impact that helps motivate the student to learn and attend school. When these “auxiliary” programs are forced out, it cheats the student of being able to learn.

Then there are the standardized tests; tests that are supposed to be unbiased and fair. If you believe that then contact me, for I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska that I’ll sell you real cheap. If we were to discuss the problems with tests in general, not to mention the many added flaws inherent in standardized tests, then we would be looking at a post the size of War and Peace. But to name a few; cultural bias, regional bias, development bias, guessing instead of answering. First let’s look at cultural bias and regional bias, as they are very similar. It is a question of perspective. Each of us have been bought up in and influenced by the culture of our family, our neighborhood, our community, our city, our state, etc. Because of this there are things that Alice, raised in a rural homogenous farming community, and Joe, raised in a overpopulated, diverse urban area, are not going to view the same way.  This isn’t even counting racial, religious, or any number of other biases that could come into play. A test can’t take all of these factors into account and still be standardized. Next, let’s talk about developmental bias. Ashley is in fourth grade and is on a fourth grade level in language arts, but is still first grade level for math or science. There is nothing wrong with Ashley, she has no learning disabilities, she just is behind developmentally on math and science in her natural progression. This is natural, and there is nothing wrong with it, or with her. Yet she has to test at the end of the year at fifth grade level or she, her teacher, and school will have failed under NCLB. If at the end of the year she tests and is at fifth grade level in language arts, but at fourth grade level for math and science, then there is punishment pending, despite the fact that Ashley advanced two grade levels in those subjects, which is a great success in the real world of learning. Especially at earlier grades, students do not always progress at the same level on all subjects. It has nothing to do with there being a problem with their learning ability or the way they are being taught, it is just how they develop.  Finally, let’s discuss multiple guess, otherwise known as multiple choice. If a person knows how tests work and/or is a good guesser it is easy to look very good on multiple choice, true/false, and matching tests. Many schools are teaching how tests are set up to aid students to pass the test, instead of teaching actual material. Personally, I was taught in school how tests were prepared and set up, and I am an excellent guesser. I took a test one time that was a timed multiple choice test. It was broken into subjects. I found myself running out of time on my weakest subject, so I resorted to using my answers to spell random words or make patterns on the answer sheet. I ended up with my best score, an incredibly high one, on this section. These tests do not test knowledge, or measure learning. What they do is help categorize where you fit as a drone.

That is the true goal of NCLB (other than a political slogan); to create worker drones. Yes, an abundant number of people will fall through the cracks and be a “burden” on society. The politicians and their wealthy and powerful puppet masters don’t care about those ones, except as handy tools to divert those who are able to care about society from looking too closely at what is going on. Besides, those in power are also almost insisting that we over-breed so they have more fodder for the machine. They are aided in this by the political machine known as the church, but that is another post.