Post by Cohen:
“Schools are no longer centers of intellectual curiosity as they may have once been. In less than 15 years schools have been transformed into test mills that process young people into lines that ultimate suggest prison or college and do very little to prepare them for anything in between. Matter of fact in a recent paper I wrote regarding high stakes testing I pointed out that within the last 10 years (1997-2007) the economics of the testing industry and all of the spin offs have gone from a $260 million dollar a year industry to an $700 million dollar a year industry (Supovitz, 2009).â€
Yesterday, I talked with a retired Douglas Anderson teacher. He stated that some at DA are leaving “teachingâ€, not wishing to engage the tons of paperwork and the excessive, structured testing. This was interesting because I’ve been saying for years that the paperwork I’ve heard teachers talk about, and the lack of freedom given the teachers would push me to another profession.
Instead of forced and structured lessen plans and testing, which seemed to have been almost non-existent in the fifties, why not recognize the most valuable attribute of good educating, which is that of inspiring the students, of giving them the powerful “thirst†for knowledge, because if successful, one would discover that many students will almost educate themselves.
I recall several teachers who, by their methods, by the freedom given to them in their classrooms, by the wisdom they possessed, were able to inspire, to light the fire of curiosity in us students.
The thirst for knowledge, for engaging life and all its wonders, can be like a drug, as one wants more and more. And this drug is free.
Our school administrators and bureaucrats shackle our teachers with over-control, tons of paperwork, and forced structured testing, but have no clue what freedom can produce among teachers. Admittedly, freedom to some teachers gives them freedom to be mediocre. I recall lazy teachers, uninspiring teachers. But look at what the excessive control of teachers has produced in our schools today. It has produced mediocrity, much like the Soviet system after decades of top-down control of so-called communism produced a shamefully inefficient system and world of poor products and uninspired citizens. Just as these idiotic policies brought the Soviets to their knees, our idiotic school system is bringing our educational system to its knees.
The bureaucrats, let me call them idiots, in politics, in school boards, and in high levels of school administrations are, by excessive control over “teachingâ€, producing mediocrities in teachers, and therefore mediocre students. A good educational system will give more freedom to teachers, will instill in them the value of inspiring the students, of lighting the fire within so that the student will thirst for learning, and can actually see where he or she is in the scheme of things, and where they might go.
