copyright - 2010 Betsy L. Angert. Empathy And Education; BeThink or BeThink.org
"The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers"
~ Jean Piaget [Swiss Psychologist. Pioneer in the study of child intelligence. 1896-1980]
"The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us"
~ Norman Cousins [Essayist, Editor associated with Saturday Evening Post 1912-1990]
"America's noble experiment, universal education for all" may have become but an idealized theory. In practice it long seemed the impossible dream. However, for the hopeful this statement was a reverie, although the veracity was virtually unrecognizable at best. Still the notion lived on. The powerful prose marveled many. That is all but believers in a for-profit privatized educational system. Today, corporate aficionados have conquered. Commerce controls School District Administrators. It shapes decisions made. Countless elementary and secondary school campuses are transformed in accordance. Big business buys and sells city classrooms. Our forefathers would have thought present-day headlines could only appear in fictional accounts. Nonetheless banners blare, "This Class Is Brought to You By. [fill in the corporate enterprise of your choice]"
A formidable future has found novel ways to weave itself into our city schools. In Los Angeles the Unified District Approved Corporate Sponsors in their Schools.
The advantage, or what was posited as such, is shorter summers. "District officials said the plan would benefit students, who will be on a calendar that is more in tune with testing schedules and that mimics the college calendar." Surely, the public is assured, every pupil prefers to synchronize his or her personal lives with assessment agendas. What child would not wish to coordinate his or her datebook with the desires of school Administrators?
After all, a little learner has nothing better to do than to take a standardized test at the behest of statisticians, test publishers, school staffers, and those policy brokers who sit in stuffy offices. This is the mindset of a society who has forgotten its mission.
Might we consider what occurs when we rely on the rote, the scores, and the easily observable gains? Some social scientists have. Pedagogues comprehend the corporate world's involvement in our schools has already influenced or impaired our children's creativity. The effect of our belief in efficiency, as extolled by a free enterprise system, has had a huge taken a huge toll on education. For decades, curriculums have been changed in order to conform to a company culture. Prospectus and pupil guidelines parallel what is evident in an industrialized economy. Every effort is examined, rated, and ranked; even originality is observed as though it too can be accurately calculated.
A Box? Or a Spaceship? What Makes Kids Creative
By Sue Shellenbarger
Wall Street Journal.
December 15, 2010"Americans' scores on a commonly used creativity test fell steadily from 1990 to 2008, especially in the kindergarten through sixth-grade age group, says Kyung Hee Kim, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. The finding is based on a study of 300,000 Americans' scores from 1966 to 2008 on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, a standardized test that's considered a benchmark for creative thinking . . .
Might it be true that an increased industrial presence portends further deterioration? Even creativity has become but a measure. Lest we forget as countless adults have; as children many were frustrated by a grade that assessed how we performed on a multiple-choice visual examination. [I know as an abundantly analytical audio-learner, I was. Indeed, I still am.] Nonetheless, as a society we insist that the invisible progression known as learning can be calculated in the details of single appraisal.
In our current educational system, stimulated synapses, or the electrical currents that race through the brain as we process information, are read as if they were currency. Count the change or experience it through an Educator's personal transition. A Scholar, who studied with Theodore R. Sizer, a prominent education-reformer, Shael Polakow-Suransky once affirmed, "Until we start seeing assessments that ask kids to write research papers, ask them to solve unfamiliar problems, ask them to defend their ideas, ask them to engage with both fiction and nonfiction texts; until those kinds of assessments are our state assessments, all we're measuring are basic skills." . . if that. The soon to be second-in-command of New York City Schools in the past understood that what occurs in a young person's life each day effects his or her performance on a standardized test.
Yet, as The New York Times reports, this same sage now thinks More and "Better" Testing is needed. Journalist Fernanda Santos writes after a lengthy investigation, "In his evolution from an idealist teacher to a data-mining administrator, Mr. Polakow-Suransky, personifies the seismic changes in education that were beginning to take shape just as he was drawing up his first lesson plans."
Shael Polakow-Suransky had been an advocate for more authentic, observable, classroom performance and portfolio assessments. Today, as Chief Accountability Officer of the New York City Department of Education, Polakow-Suransky prepares for another supremely institutionalized position. As he steps on stage as second-in-command for the New York City School Chancellorship Shael Polakow-Suransky acknowledges that while tests are imperfect, standardized examinations are an essential measurement tool. "To put it very simply," he said, "how do you know that the kids are learning?"
Perchance, lost in time and space, as is the idea [ideal] of a "universal education for all," this Administrator, and America, has forgotten how creativity is born and articulated. Thankfully, there are a few who think imagination is invaluable. The construct is invisible. Then mind's eye cannot be captured and scored, nay measured a stressful testing moment. Nonetheless, these experts fear that what was once considered fiction, corporate control of curriculums, is now the folly experienced as everyday life.
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