We as a society decide what kids should learn?
by CarolineMy colleague recently decided he wants to become a math teacher, and he’s starting classes in about a week at one of Chicago’s universities. He directed me to this column entitled What’s Wrong With Teachers?:
The old view, in place since the 1930s, had held that the key to good education at the K-12 level was to research how kids learn and then fund activities that promoted learning, no matter what the cost. The new reformers by contrast recommended that we as a society decide what kids should learn and then punish those who failed to learn it, ultimately by withholding funds from schools and teachers.
Achievement tests, many of which Illinois pushed down my throat as a child, both set the bar low and give the impression that students may be doing better than they are. I remember math teachers saying things like, “Don’t worry, the test only covers through geometry,” which for the more successful students was a sophomore-year class. One-size-fits-all curriculum does the same thing to students that the columnist theorizes it does to teachers: limits ability to “fail” on paper by eliminating the freedom to succeed.
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