I ran into a former colleague at the grocery store today. We had taught in the same school years ago and I had spoken at a major conference he ran last year. He told me more about what was going on in the field of education since he's involved in middle school education statewide and I'm on the outside sharing my high school Strategies for Success program around the country.
He told me that schools are so obsessed with test scores that they're actually scripting the lessons!! What??? What if a student doesn't understand? The teachers are told to move on. What????? How does that improve test scores? How does that educate? How does that honor kids as human beings in any way, shape or form? Bad enough that they're not supposed to have fun anymore. Bad enough that we've taken away all the classes they love in school to focus on math, science and english. But robotic teaching? Not what we need.
I guess they're trying to model the schools after the Japanese and Chinese who are so good in math. But can they invent? Do we look to China for the best inventions? Or do they manufacture what we invent? Think about it, we send our manufacturing overseas which is not good for our country. Now we're not developing the creativity we need to design the next products, the solutions to our problems.
We've got it backwards...and it's time to turn it around. We can have decent test scores, and creativity, and happy kids. I've seen it happen. Our kids want it. Out teachers want it. Our society needs it. And the time is now.
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