Education or Indoctrination? – Part One
I have been generally rather horrified at the state of our education system lately. The recent expansion of “standardized testing” is one example. It forces teachers to teach one particular set of trivia, since a student’s year of hard work can be erased by not knowing enough of that trivia to pass the standardized test. This turns our schools not into educational institutions but into places where young people are indoctrinated with particular points of view. The teachers I remember learning the most from were the exceptional ones who could present things in their own style. The micromanaging of the syllabus reduces the effectiveness of the best teachers, while doing nothing to weed out those who are simply bad teachers.
In Gwinnett County, Georgia, the Superintendent of the Board of Education has recently come under fire for making the observation that there are not many blacks living in Idaho. How that statistically verifiable statement could possibly be offensive to anyone I have no idea, and I certainly do not approve of someone being fired or forced to resign over something that petty. However, I would welcome anything that gets Alvin Wilbanks out of public education. He has been one of the leading proponents of runaway standardized testing on a national as well as a local level, and was one of the architects of the No Child Left UnIndoctrinated legislation.
Why do I oppose standardized testing?
First off, if you give someone a test and never return it to them to show what they got right or wrong and why, the test has no educational value whatsoever.
Secondly, the focus on these major tests places an undue amount of stress on the students. How would you feel if at your job you were given an annual test knowing that if you did not answer enough questions correctly, your pay for the last year’s work would be taken back from you? Do you know of any business (or even governement agency) that implements a policy that stupid?
Thirdly, standardized tests are used by politicians to claim credit for “improving education” when the scores go up year over year, even though the politicians had nothing whatsoever to do with the process, except most likely to make it more difficult for teachers to do their jobs properly. And of course none of the politicians would EVER even CONSIDER manipulating the tests from year to year to make themselves look good…
Teaching is a profession, and the only involvement politicians should have in public education is to make sure the professionals have the tools they need to be successful. If you needed open heart surgery, would you want your surgeon to have your Senator looking over his shoulder telling him where to cut? Didn’t think so.
The only measurement of our education system that matters is how many students make it through to graduation from high school and how many of those students are prepared at that point for success in higher education and/or in the workplace. Education does not stop with graduation; it continues for as long as you live. The purpose of K-12 is to make sure that each student knows not a particular set of trivia, but how to evaluate and acquire the knowledge needed at each subsequent stage of life.
Standardized test do nothing to improve the education process, nor do they accurately measure the success of that process.
