Some days ago, I posted a blog about the decision by the Oklahoma Department of Education to post on its website the names and personal information of students who got a waiver and didn’t take the state tests. This was widely understood as a purposeful effort to humiliate the students.
Now from a reader comes something that is either equally mean or meaner. I report, you decide:
Today I read that two schools near me have been prohibited by the California legislature from issuing ID cards and notebooks color-coded TO REFLECT THE TEST SCORES OF THE STUDENTS. Yes!! The students with the top scores had black ID cards and notebooks. Then came gold for “proficient” and then white for low-performing. These last were made to stand in a separate cafeteria line!!!!!! It’s so difficult to believe that this sort of nonsense is happening in the United States of America.
This sounded too absurd and mean-spirited to be true, and I had to check before posting. It’s true. Read it here.
Diane
. What in the world happened to common sense?
What in the world has happened to common sense? No one in their right mind could possibly think that this is good for kids.
Can Gattaca be all that far in the future?
When my son went to middle school in the late 90s, 6th grade students were labeled Group A (“gifted” students), Group B (a few “gifted” and higher-performing students), and Group C (everybody else who self-identified as the “boom boom” kids). Group C was housed in portable classrooms. It was a new school and opened with an enrollment of 1600 in a building built for 900. We went the magnet route after that.
I thought tracking went out of style many years ago. I guess it’s just a “retro” look, eh???
This should’ve appeared in The Onion but sadly it is part of our reality now. I can hear the justifications now: Just like in the real world — some earn platinum credit cards, some gold, some regular, and some just don’t qualify at all. The American Dream personified: you too can aspire to holding a black card if you can only get a certain score. . . .
It certainly represents the neoliberal ideal of schools being corporate training grounds that hold their main purpose as preparing the low-wage workforce and perpetuating the yawning chasms of inequalities in society. A concrete version of the meritocracy that America apparently craves, where the haves are privileged far above the have-nots based purely upon something as arbitrary as a test score (the only accepted currency in today’s education world).
What I don’t understand is why anyone would be shocked that these schools are taking the current reforms to their logical conclusions. Too soon? The takeover isn’t quite complete yet, after all it seems. Thank goodness some are starting to see the ultimate conclusion of this tragedy in the making.
My daughter’s high school (also in CA) has penalties for students who don’t either raise their scores from one year to the next or score at proficient or above. The penalties include not being able to take an honors or AP course (which may be appealed) and not being allowed an off-campus lunchtime pass (for juniors and seniors) for the first 10 weeks of school. I was at the school on the last day of the test for a meeting, and the assistant principal came on the intercom and offered gift cards to restaurants for high scoring students. I can’t believe that any educator in Anaheim thought the test-score branding was a good idea. My stomach hurts.
“Yet, even with the best intentions, we recognize that innovative programs sometimes have unintended consequences that may impact some of our students,” so says a school admin involved in this embarrassing episode.
What, exactly, is so innovative about this bizarre attempt at coercing students to increase their test scores? How is it different from the gold-star chart on the classroom walls of my own long-past youth?
I was once called into the principal’s office when I was teaching an elementary gifted class after a mother complained because she didn’t like the way I passed back papers, especially tests. I would recognize by names those that if there had been a letter grade would have been an A. Didn’t go any further than that. Must understand her child was very seldom or ever in those lists. After that, I quit that and went to stickers, stamps, or words and passed papers back randomly. She very seldom got those, either.
So what about Special Ed students? Are they supposed to feel badly about themselves? Wait at the end of the line? Wear color-coded labels?
Public shaming is not a new method. Throughout history many oppressive regimes, just like ours, have been using it in order to dehumanized, segregate conquer. Corporatism is as cruel and sadistic as any other anti democratic reactionary regimes and it sees no difference between children, students, the sick the poor or anyone else who is not part of the criminal crony class. Cruelty can serve the political elites in many ways, and conditioning students from young age to cruelty can guarantee the preservation of crony capitalism for many years to come. In order to keep this corrupt system one has to be able to ignore the growing misery of many other members of society. In order to convince people not to care for other human beings,we first have to segregate and create the ‘other’ – less successful students in this case – ignore the reasons that might have made them be less successful and eventually blame that group or individuals for their failings.
The most dangerous word in our crony capitalistic anti intellectual times is ‘solidarity’, it means democracy that is born because an individual care about oneself but also cares about the next door neighbor the homeless on the other side of town, or a sick elderly who is in hospital. If we care about the ‘other’ we will be demanding better services, from education, healthcare system, welfare and other support systems that do not benefit ourselves at the moment . This dangerous idea – solidarity – might create mass resistance to privatization, that is a blank check given to unaccountable tyrannies like corporations.
Dehumanization is the key to commit any crime. Back in the thirties the Nazi regime had to dehumanized great segments of the population. The task of creating a threat from persons – Jews – that looked behaved and sounded like anyone else required a program of dehumanization and segregation. Jews had to be under continues public shaming, carry special documents and signs and change or add names. Public shaming was needed in order to create hate toward the new enemy.
Professor Noam Chomsky while discussing public education said: “…undermining of the conception of solidarity and cooperation. I think that lies at the heart of the attack on the public school system, the attack on social security, the effort to block any form of national health care, which has been going on for years.”
(He quoted ‘Lehman Brothers’ investor’s publication that said: “Look, we’ve taken over the health system; we’ve taken over the prison system; the next big target is the educational system. So we can privatize the educational system, make a lot of money out of it”)
This sadistic program to classify students in public based on their “grades” is just one symptom of the attempt to undermine any cooperation and create social apathy, demolish democracy and introduce corporatism to all aspect of life. Obama’s cruel “race to the top” has the same characteristic, and like in any race, one has to care for oneself while ignoring the needs of others in order to “achieve”.
The process of public shaming and dehumanizing was in the center of an experiment run by the brilliant school teacher Jane Elliott who has proven that those can lead to segregation, hate and racism. It is highly recommended to watch the documentary ‘A Class divided’:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html
I’ve been rereading John Rawls’ concept of “justice as fairness”. Should be required reading for anyone living in a supposedly democratic republic.
“The Scarlet Notebook”
What’s next? “Stars on thars?”
Tattooing would be much more effective. Totally portable; cannot be inadvertently left behind, at home or misplaced; provides a lasting memory of that shameful sophomore year when I went astray; and, tattoos are currently “in.”
I think that’s been done.
Which is not to say it can’t happen here.