My last blog post was over a year ago. There is a reason: Nothing has changed.
Policymakers are still pushing for bad education policy,
teachers are still yielding their authority to data, and students still cannot
win. All my previous posts are still (unfortunately) relevant today.
Have I given up?
Absolutely not. I have been
fighting in my own classroom. I have
been doing my best to mitigate the effects of bad policy, I have been asserting
my authority to assess students, and I have been explaining the big picture to
my students so they can scramble for a win if they choose. This has not been an easy year because it is
difficult to undo 10 years of institutionalization within a system that
dehumanizes and devalues every person within it.
In Atlas Shrugged, the main character was offered advice
whenever faced by difficult decisions: check your premises. This year, I have checked my premises. When working with students, I operate under
the premise that school sucks.
From the very first day of kindergarten, school gets it
wrong. On day one, students learn
quickly that their value is not determined by their own exploration or
understanding. They learn quickly that
their value is determined by an adult.
They do not own their own experience, it is determined by a score, a mark,
a grade, a sticker, some external validation that is judged by someone other
than themselves.
Knowledge itself is absolute and concrete, but the evaluation
of knowledge is not. Knowledge can be
gained through an infinite amount of methods and experiences. From day one, those methods and experiences
are narrowed down to a small finite set and paired with a strict timeline that
determines winners and losers, judged by adults. Students lose the intrinsic motivation to
inquire, explore, and question that they were born with. From day one, they are programed to perform then
wait for validation. They are programed to
ask “is this correct?” They are programed
to silence their natural inquisitiveness.
No matter how creative a kindergarten teacher gets, no
matter how much care and effort is put into their work, the teacher still must
assess the students with a score. And
the students know it. They know they are scored, ranked, compared,
and judged. They know because the
teachers (not all, but most) talk about how important the scores are, their
parents and guardians talk about how important the scores are, every element of
the media stresses the importance of scores and grades. No matter how a senate hearing is viewed when
there is a disagreement between “growth” and “proficiency”, it’s still a
judgement based on scores that dehumanizes students and teachers. This message
is driven home at each grade level and with increasing emphasis as the years go
on. At the very beginning, school
emphasizes external rewards at the cost of each student’s self-worth and intrinsic
desire to understand the world.
Sooner or later, students value their scores over what they
actually understand. The students who
score well will think they have knowledge.
By the time they get to high school, students who score well will spend
most of their time asking “Does this count? Is this right? What’s my grade?”. They will do work for the sake of doing work
because they know that work counts for a score.
They won’t understand the bigger picture of curriculum because they are
too focused on individual assignments.
They figured out early on that understanding isn’t necessary and they
can simply forget anything they learned because what they know is not as important as what they score. These students can
score well in any classroom, but they may or may not understand what they have done.
And it doesn’t matter to them, their
parents, or their school because they can provide the necessary scores that
look good. Once they are confronted by anything that is difficult or
complicated, they will stress out or freeze up or break down. They will not know how to handle difficulty.
Since scores are extremely important to all elements of
educational policy, schools and teachers make critical decisions based on
them. Test score data is all the school
cares about. From the teacher’s
standpoint, passing the class is what they care about. The teacher feels pressure from a variety of
sources (self included) to make sure students have a minimum score required to
pass the class. Many times, this
pressure is applied regardless of what the student knows or has shown. In some cases, a student can show no work or
demonstrate no understanding and still pass on to the next class or grade
because of these pressures. Appropriate
interventions for helping students understand things are not as important as
passing scores. By the time they get to
high school, the students who do not score well in school early on will have
one of two views: they will either think
they are incapable (stupid) or they will know that they don’t need to apply
effort since they will be passed on (lazy).
When confronted with anything
challenging or complex, they will either feel they have no need to attempt it
or they do not have the ability to perform well.
In most cases, students have predictable reactions to
difficult tasks. They either don’t
attempt them, panic, or give up. They
equate difficult tasks with impossible tasks.
These reactions are a direct result of what was initiated on day one in
kindergarten and amplified throughout school years. These reactions are logical
since students sacrifice their intrinsic love of learning for extrinsic rewards
bestowed upon them by beneficent adults.
The problem is that when students behave in the logical way the school
trains them to behave (stupid and lazy), we then turn around and beat them up
for it. We label them, we reprimand
them, we punish them, we place all the responsibility on them. There are some students who can continue
striving for success in this environment, but for many students, they just can’t
win. We beat them up for behaving in a
logical and rational manner.
My premise this year is that school sucks. If that's the case, why do I still teach? Because why not!? This is the way I continue to fight. I do my best to have students unlearn
what we have institutionally taught them.
I do my best to have them ignore scores and focus on learning. I do my best to have them prioritize their
understanding over their grades. I do my
best to convince them that “it’s hard” does not mean “I can’t”. I do my best to show them that I truly
believe they are capable of learning anything they wish to learn. It’s been challenging for me because I see
how difficult it is for students to view school this way. I see how tightly students cling to the
narrative that school exists to judge them, that they are recipients to
whatever school bestows upon them, that they are not in control of their own
learning. Since my last blog post, I have also seen how the direction of
education policy is only making it worse.
And that should explain my silence.
