Left Behind: Education's False Rapture - Democracy Means You

Published 2005
Democracy Means You


Left Behind: Education’s False Rapture
by Miro Soledad (pseudonym for Alison Ross)

It’s a lie that schools are bastions of education for students. A blatantly inane, patently absurd lie. But not a lie for the reasons you might think.

Some of you might be nodding your noggins in righteous agreement: “Damn right schools are not bastions of education. Stupid teachers today couldn’t find Canada on a map. Hell, stupid teachers today couldn’t even find a map.”

Well, I’m here to dispel the maddening myth of the inept modern-day teacher and to set the record straight about schools. After al &l, contrary to the mainstream mindset, schools constitute just one-third of a child’s education.

Of course, No Child Left Behind and other school “improvement” schemes would have you believe that it is the onus of the schools to provide the educational structure for students. In fact, much of that burden falls upon society and parents; if society and families offer a solid intellectual foundation for children, then schools can build upon that framework. If society and families fail in their role, then schools have little or no scaffolding to work with, and their efforts only go so far.

Now for many people, the word education conjures up ominous imagery of bricked buildings, desks arrayed in rigid rows, ghostly writing scrawled across impossibly black boards, and a bespectacled, austerely att ˇired middle-aged woman speaking in domineering tones to malcontented minors.

Of course, their scholastic imagery would be a bit outdated - teachers today are a bit more creative with their clothing, have traded screechy chalk and menacing blackboards for innocuous white boards and cheerfully colorful markers, and don’t necessarily arrange student desks in rows.

But the point is, for many people, education is an institution that, however necessary, is something to be endured, not enjoyed.

But schools don’t have to be that way. Schools can be vibrant, creative communities. But while many teachers strive to make the classroom experience intellectually stimulating, schools are under enormous political pressure to perform to unrealistic, unfair standards. tAgain, we have the outrageously shortsigned No Child Left Behind Act - billed, of course, as some heavenly educational fix-it-all - to thank for imposing this pressure and sucking the life out of schools.

No Child Left Behind aims to level the playing field for all students. It aims to be the one tool that will equalize the educational experience for everyone, and that will transform schools into magical manufacturers of armies of perfect students, all marching to the same generic beat.

Never mind that the No Child Leff Behind Act is bafflingly long at 647 pages. Never mind that it’s impossiblyvague in its demands. Never mind that it was scripted by educrats more interested in keeping up appearances - in putting a glossy sheen on things to retain their jobs - rather than actually helping students learn.

Of course, the Act hinders the potential for real school imp ’rovement by calling for more standardized testing. As many have come to realize, standardized testing is a malicious evil that should be immediately eradicated. Standardized testing artificially erases the vivid varieties of intellect that exist among students, pigeonholing pupils into categories of stifling sameness. Standardized testing discourages imaginative thinking among students. Furthermore, it dissuades teacher innovation, so that the school environment begins to resemble a factory, with students and teachers working a maximum speed for maximum efficiency to produce a consumable product, yet creating nothing of substance that will, in the end, benefit society.

Now, naturally, I am all for some form of student assessment. I advocate authentic assessment - that which evolves from the curriculum and that allows for creative and philosophical student expression. In this way, I believe that essay portfoilos are an ideal tool. These portfolios give students the opportunity to prove what they have learned about a variety of subjects and to apply that knowledge in novel ways.

Because learning, finally, is not an end unto itself, but a process; ultimately, what matters is not that you know what a metaphor is or where Colombia is located, but how you use metaphors to enrich communication, and how you weave your knowledge of Colombian culture into a discourse on Latin America. After all, as Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
But standardized testing, while its explicit aim is to assess student learning, has a hidden aim - and that is to test schools and teachers, to see if they are really doing their job. Implicit in this, of course, is that today’s teachers are lazy, and would rather recline in their chairs than actually teach students.

While certainly there are idle instructors - just as there are incompetent truck driv ers, receptionists, computer programmers, CEOs, and presidents - this is the exception to the rule. For the most part, teachers want to do a good job - but they are hindered by oppressive political pressures and a society that relishes its role in relentlessly scapegoating teachers. Our students are failing, society says, because teachers are lazy.

And this is where the fallacy enters in - the fallacy that schools are solely responsible for student achievement. Parents and society - the larger culture - are just as responsible for students’ education as schools are.

And so I ask: is a society that inordinately prizes sports, that cherishes vulgar and violent video games and softcore porn in mainstream movies, doing its job to help shape student intellects? Are parents who allow their children to endlessly indulge in TV sports watching, violent video games and softcore porn films doing their part to help massage their kids’ intellectual well-being?

So, I turn the “teachers are lazy” mantra right back in society’s face and say, “Society sucks.” If society actually encouraged reading and regular involvement in the higher art forms - while still permitting participation in a healthy pop culture for balance - then maybe our children would actually be able to learn when they come to school.

As it is, many students have huge mental deficits, owing to overindulgence in a diseased pop culture. And then teachers are blamed as the cause for their failure, as though teachers can do a whole lot with half-literate kids. (And this is not to mention [the rampant bad behavior of kids; for kids are a mere mirror of the society around them.)

So this blame, as I have said, takes shape in the form the ill-conceived No Child Left Behind, which seeks to compensate for teachers’ perceived laziness by holding schools accountable for low standardized test performance. As though that is something, in the end, a teacher has much control over. The best a teacher can do is teach the material in an accessible and challenging way - it’s up to the students (with the help of their parents and society) to absorb the content and make intelligent use of it.

Of course, even if most students were properly shaped by a society that treasures high culture and education, standardized tests would still be deeply flawed means of assessment. Besides the facts that these tests don’t cogently follow from school curricula Ë, are often flawed in wording and logic, and deter creativity, they are adminstered to populations that aren’t intellectually prepared for them: second language learners and special education students must take the same tests as their more capable peers.

So here you have a perplexing paradox: on the one hand, schools are told to respect and accomodate ethnic and learning diversity, yet on the other hand, schools are told to assess all kids in the same way.

In order to circumvent these mandates and boost their scores, some states have been able to administer tests to second language learners in the students’ native language. Furthermore, No Child Left Behind allows states to choose the content they will test in - so that a given state might actually choose subjects its students do typically well in over ones that students routinely fail.

On top of that, reliance on standardized tests leads to test score manipulation as teachers fear being fired,
schools in low-income areas being penalized because of poor performance, and schools getting on the dreaded “needs improvement” list, often over things such as like having low test turnout. And this in turn leads to schools having to manipulate students into attending tests.

Yet another way that society hampers educational improvement is by being pathetically passive about the egregious contrast between military spending and the education budget. The Pentagon budget is over $400 billion, while federal spending on education is around $35 billion - sad proof that the industry of bombing babies is more lucrative than the industry of nurturing them.

Furthermore, our government - sponsored by society - favors t )ax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations, rather than tax increases for better schools. Everyone knows that a properly funded educational system could lead to smaller schools and classrooms - and those in turn could at least partially compensate for societal failures. Smarter economics means smarter students.

There is no denying that there is needed reform in schools. But No Child Left Behind - Bush’s false educational rapture - leaves everyone behind by putting the sole focus and blame on schools for what is, patently, a societal ill.