From the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Dear Parents,
Your kids are our kids.
Your kids -- our kids -- are not "stakeholders," "clients," or "customers." They are our kids, our charges, our collaborators.
They are not "raw material" or "human capital."
Our kids are not barcodes. They are not cogs. They are not slides on a PowerPoint or points on a graph. They have names. They have hopes and fears and dreams.
They have crushes and heartaches and disappointments and jubilations. Sometimes they have all of these in a single class period.
They have stories. They came from somewhere, and they are going somewhere. We want our classrooms to be an important part of that story, not just an obstacle or a detour.
They are people. They are young people, people who, in certain moments and in the right light, are at their very best. They are people who make mistakes because they are still learning, and because we all do.
And they are watching. They see our mouths, "You must think about the world around you, question what you see on TV, and always seek new solutions."
They see that ultimately, all their learning boils down to this test, this data point. They understand hypocrisy more than you know. They deserve better. They deserve to have a reason to feel good about coming to school. They deserve to know that there are adults who believe in them and want the best for them.
They deserve an education that treats them not as outcomes to be produced, but as producers and discoverers themselves. The United States is known for its inventors and discoverers, yet we discourage critical thinking when we tell kids they deserve nothing better than a bubble. Our kids deserve better than NCLB, AYP, and RttT.
We want our kids to have the ability to design a new way of doing things. We want them to explain why language is important, to read a ballot proposition, and to locate Afghanistan on a map.
We want them to be funny. We want them to laugh. We want them to examine philosophy, discuss the economy without parroting sound bites, and recognize the reality of credit card rates.
We want them to come up with the answer on their own -- maybe an answer we haven’t thought of -- rather than select the “right” answer from a list. We respect them more than that.
We want our kids to think for themselves. We want them to enjoy discussing a book whether or not it will appear on an end-of-course test. We want them to see the classroom not as a place to pass time but as a place to begin to figure out who they are.
We want them to learn the strength of their own voices, that one person can make a difference and that several people can cause a revolution. When they leave our classrooms, we hope our kids can – and will want to -- articulate their ideas: to know their ideas count.
Fear not. They will be counted. They will be measured. They will be tested; all of us, in one way or another, will be tested. PowerPoints will be made, and graphs will be presented. According to some formulations, value will be added.
But we want our kids to know they already have value, they already count, and the most important tests are the ones we all face every day:
Think it through. Play fair. Question always. Do your best. This is what we want for our kids, your kids. We won’t surrender our expectations, our integrity, or our belief in every child’s access to the finest free and public education in the world.
We won't give up on them. Our kids are who we fight for every single day. We won't give up, parents. Neither should you.
— Jordan Kohanim , Larken McCord, & Cathy Rumfelt
2 comments:
ATL teachers got caught faking test data in order to get bonuses for themselves. They have a little credibility problem. Maybe a lofty manifesto will help.
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents. The whole blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from the theological idea that human value is a scarce thing, represented symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid.
That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It found its "scientific" presentation in the bell curve, along which talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of Biology. It’s a religious notion, School is its church. I offer rituals to keep heresy at bay. I provide documentation to justify the heavenly pyramid.
Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession, something like this would happen. Professional interest is served by making what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating the laity to the priesthood. School is too vital a jobs-project, contract giver and protector of the social order to allow itself to be "re-formed." It has political allies to guard its marches, that’s why reforms come and go without changing much. Even reformers can’t imagine school much different.
David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal development, when both are 13, you can’t tell which one learned first—the five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I label Rachel "learning disabled" and slow David down a bit, too. For a paycheck, I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, "special education" fodder. She’ll be locked in her place forever.
In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a learning disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.
That’s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation. There isn’t a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen—that probably guarantees it won’t.
How much more evidence is necessary? Good schools don’t need more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn or deliberate indifference to it. I can’t teach this way any longer. If you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me know. Come fall I’ll be looking for work.
"I Quit, I Think"- John Taylor Gatto
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