A comment from a reader, Joyce Murdock Feilke, in Texas:
“As a mental health professional in Texas schools, I can relate to this teacher’s comment: “The students are beginning to “check out”.
“Dissociation is how children often cope with stress which they are developmentally unprepared to process. When it becomes chronic in their daily environment, it can lead to mental illness, since it impacts their social and emotional development.
“The age inappropriate focus on performance and data with age inappropriate material and methods related to high stakes testing, has created an authoritarian environment of fear, intimidation, and boredom for children in elementary schools. This performance based reward/punishment environment is the same punitive classical conditioning (behaviorism) that is used to “train” dogs and zoo animals.
“I have observed the increasing symptoms of emotional desensitization in children in Texas elementary schools and spoken up and written articles about it for the past two years . After a time in this environment, many children will begin to look more like prisoners of war than normal healthy children. They lose vitality, spontaneity, and the ability for imaginative play. They have difficulty with scientific thinking and using higher level thinking skills. They become obedient and submissive to authority, and function more robotic. The symptoms of traumatic stress: Regression, Dissociation, and Constriction, are similar in PTSD, BOS, and “Battered Child Syndrome”: In these children’s daily school environment, it is not “post” as after acute trauma, but it is “chronic”, and has high potential to cause permanent psychological damage in the form of personality disorders (mental illness).
“What many of us in Texas schools originally thought to be soaring rates of High Functioning Autism (HFA), which also has symptoms of regression, dissociation, and constriction, is now thought to be stress related rather than HFA. For young children who still have a developing brain, being forced to function in a chronic state of hyper vigilance and/or hypoarousal or hyperarousal, will become “hard wired” into the personality. It changes their brain chemistry. CCSS is creating Anxiety Disorders and Depression that many children will suffer for a lifetime.
“Few politicians or “reformers” have listened to the voices of mental health professionals or educators who are warning about the potential for psychological harm in this CCSS (and Texas STAAR) environment. After writing numerous professional articles and reports for state legislators, only to have them ignored, I wrote the same message in the rhyme of Dr Suess: Here is my warning about CCSS and Texas STAAR, which I will keep repeating until someone listens:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s all turn our children into mental basket cases. Thank you, President Obama, for this gift.
Isn’t it evident everywhere that people are “checking out” by using drugs, drinking, engaging in behaviors of escape? All kinds of advice abounds, telling us that in order to cope we have to ignore what others think, stop trying to impress, stop comparing ourselves to others, live in the moment, stop sweating the small stuff, accept ourselves as we are, realize life isn’t a competition, praise others, focus on the moment, and avoid stress.
Hmm. The effect of this testing culture creates more stress. If adults need cooing skills, how much worse will it be for kids as they have to cope with all the things we know we need to avoid for our health and sanity?
Is the goal of Duncan and Gates to create more stress? If so, the goal has bern achieved.
Stress is a killer. Emotionally, socially, psychologically, financially, physically. Stress helps create depression, panic attacks, metabolic syndrome, heart issues, cancer, and much more.
It is happening to teachers every day. It is happening in all careers to some extent. Politics create stress. Doom and gloom predictions about unemployment, health care, medicare, and social security create more stress. Student loans, no jobs, low pay, no future create more stress.
I do not recognize America any longer.
Is it any wonder that kids drop out, smoke pot, get drunk, wind up pregnant and in poverty?
The so-called “rigor” – translate “developmentally inappropriate” – breeds hopelessness.
When I became a teacher, my goal was to give kids hope, no matter their socio-economic situation.
I truly find the current educational climate to be so negative that I detest it.
… and the fake education reformers that are causing this widespread damage. That includes the president and his puppet master, Bill Gates.
$25?
“$25?”
“$25?”???
This is simply child abuse pushed on our children by the wealthy and their stooges in government.
Abuse like this must be responded to with direct and unrestrained action by the people .
“I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.”
— Malcolm X
History has already proven that the quote from Malcom X is correct. All one need do is look at every uprising by the people against oppressive governments and/or its leaders.
History is riddled with such uprising. Oppression gave rise to Communism, republics and democracy, but then oppression seems to repeat itself on a regular basis regardless of the political system of the country.
If we look at China, for instance, every dynasty was pulled down by uprisings when the leaders become too corrupt and ignored the needs of the people until the people were suffering too much to take it anymore. This cycle repeated itself every few centuries followed by decades or centuries of chaos and anarchy until the next dynasty restored order.
And this was exactly why the peasants (95 percent of China’s population at the time) supported Mao and the CCP instead of Chiang Kai Shek, who admitted what he had done wrong after he lost China and was ruling Taiwan as a brutal dictator until he died in 1975, about the same time Mao died.
If the majority of the people are not suffering, then there will be no popular widespread uprising against the one percent, who arrogantly tend to forget this fact.
Lloyd – Your version of Chinese history is rather potted. The Mongol invasion wasn’t a peasant uprising.
The Mongol and Manchu invasions don’t count as insurrections. They were invasions like Hitler’s Germany invading Europe and attacking Russia.
The Mongol Empire north of the Great Wall that was founded by Genghis Khan first invaded China in 1205. In addition, The Southern Sung Dynasty—ruled by a Han Chinese emperor—would hang on until 1276, when Kublai Khan’s armies crossed the Yangtze to finish them off. By 1279 it was all over, and the reason the Southern Sung fell was becasue the dynasty was weak militarily and the Han imperial court was filled with corrupt officials similar to some of the U.S. state and federal governments today. When individuals in positions of power put their own well being, position of power and wealth before the well being of the rest of the country, that’s usually a warning sign of what’s coming.
The Mongol invasion took quite awhile and it was an invasion from outside the empire. The same could be said of the Manchu invasion that established China’s last Imperial dynasty. Those were not insurrections led by Han Chinese. They were invasions by forces from north of the Great Wall.
You said that every dynasty was destroyed by internal rebellion. That’s not true.
Then I stand corrected and change EVERY to MOST, but it is arguable that both dynasties that were defeated by the Mongols and then the Manchu were corrupt and ripe to fall anyway.
If the Mongols and Manchu hadn’t done it, eventually a rebellion would have.
In fact, when the Manchu swept in, they took advantage of the fact that the last Ming emperor asked them to help save his dynasty from a rebellion being led by one of his former generals. But the Manchu army sat it out and waited for the emperor’s army and the army led by the rebel general to fight it out and then swept in and finished off the winner. The next stop was Peking. The last Ming emperor realizing his mistake hung himself from a cherry tree on a hill in an Imperial park right outside the wall of the forbidden city.
The Mongols conquered virtually everybody they fought against. It’s not very likely that that was because everybody else happened to be corrupt. The fundamental reason for Mongol success was their extraordinary military effectiveness. Even had the Southern Sung been completely free of any corruption ( a most unlikely contingency ) it probably would have availed them little.
The China we know today was not unified as one country at the time of the Mongol invasion.
First, the Mongols conquered the Western Xia also known as the Tangut Empire that existed from 1039 to 1227 AD.
Second, the Mongols conquered the Jin Dynasty also known as the Jurchen dynasty 1115 – 1234.
Third, the Mongols conquered the Kingdom of Dali in 1253 to outflank the Song Dynasty.
The Northern Song Dynasty had its capital in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and this dynasty controlled most of inner China from 960 – 1127. The Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) refers to the period after the Song lost control of northern China to the Jin Dynasty in the Jin-Song wars. The Song Dynasty retreated south of the Yangtze river and established their capital in what is today Hangzhou.
Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional birthplace of Chinese civilization along the Yellow River, the Song economy was not in ruins, as the Southern Song Empire contained 60 percent of China’s population and a majority of the most productive agricultural land.
To repel the Jin, and later the Mongols, the Song developed revolutionary new military technology augmented by the use of gunpowder. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song.
The Mongols and the Southern Song Dynasty were even allies against the Jin Dynasty. Once that alliance broke down, it took the Mongols four decades to defeat the Southern Song Dynasty.
The dying Song dynasty sent its armies against the Mongols at Yehue under the incompetent chancellor Jia Sidao. Predictably, the battle was a disaster. Running out of troops and supplies, the Song court surrendered to the Mongols in 1276.
“If the majority of the people are not suffering, then there will be no popular widespread uprising against the one percent, who arrogantly tend to forget this fact.”…..that is a good point from Lloyd Lofthouse!
Unfortunately, the majority of parents cannot recognize the CCSS abuse to their children until the symptoms are so pronounced that the damage is done. Anxiety and depression are absolutely soaring in children as a result of the CCSS environment. I applaud this article and other mental health professionals and educators who take responsible action by pointing out the suffering of children in this environment of cruelty and neglect. It is barbaric!
barbaric isn’t harsh enough to describe them but it will do
Mike,
You should read this!
Bill
Today, the Wall Street Journal reports on the results of NY state tests (page 2, weekend).
http://online.wsj.com/articles/test-scores-are-no-sure-guide-to-what-students-know-1405122823?tesla=y
The headline is amazing: “Test Scores Are No Sure Guide to What Students Know: Results Say More About the Way Test Makers Decide to Measure Children’s Knowledge”
The graphics show performance trends in math and English, grades 3-8, before and after the new CCSS tests in math and English. Big drop in ”proficiency.”
Then the author of the article, Jo Craven McGinty, tries to explain how the new cut scores for “proficiency” are determined.
“A panel of 95 teachers divided into math and English groups (45.7 in each group?) were given “the test the students took in order of difficulty from easiest to most difficult.” Each teacher was given the task of dropping a bookmark on the test to indicate a level of performance with enough correct answers to qualify for a Level 1 “proficiency” or Level 2 (and so on). This process was repeated four times to arrive at final cut scores, meaning something like a consensus on “the threshold for each performance level.” Of course, with four iterations of the process, teachers may develop a bit of fatique, and like a hung jury may produce a 2/2 vote on the cut…No details here, but “cut” is a good name for te score.
The article is intended to convey the gist of the process, not the technicalities. For example, the teachers are not asked to determine the “order of difficulty” of the tests. That has been pre-determined, likely through statistical methods for item analysis. Teachers are setting cut scores for judgments about “good enough” or “ not good enough” for given label. The labels and cut scores function much like the old fashioned A-F rating system. As one expert said, the idea is to “send a message to kids about what is good enough.”
I think this not the primary purpose of the new testing regime. The real purpose is to reinvent the tests and scoring scale (cut scores) so fewer students appear to doing well in school and to condemn prior tests as too easy.
According to more than one expert in psychometrics, the term “proficient” is not much more than a human judgment about labeling a performance on a test.
That process is not objective, and it becomes even more complex when test items go beyond requests for fill-in-the-bubble answers. One expert is quoted in the article: “People believe they know what these labels mean. It has nothing to do with how well kids are doing. It is a way of making a judgment about how performance is going to be labeled.”
And this is the protocol that makes test scores “objective measures.” Give me a break.
Laura, would you be willing to edit and revise your comment about this Wall Street Journal piece for a guest post on my Blog at http://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/
The Alexa rank for this Blog in the U.S. is #148,255 (this morning—rank changes daily). If you are not familiar with Alexa ranking, this is a way to determine a site’s search engine rank so when someone searches for a specific topic using Google, for instance, this rank determines where your post on the topic will appear in the search. For a chance to land on the first page of a Google search, it helps if a site is in the top 1% compared to 30 million sites that Alexa ranks.
One percent is a ranking of 300,000 or less. The Alexa search engine rank for Diane’s blog is currently 14,670; that means her posts have an excellent chance of landing high on the first page of a Google search reaching more people.
Diane’s Blog is in the top 0.0489. As you can see, much better than the top 1 percent. Her Alexa global rank is also very impressive.
I’m totally on board with what you’re saying. My anecdotal proof is my son, who was checked out by 3rd grade. The school was angry with me that I wasn’t getting an adhd diagnosis and drugging him. By some grace of god, he failed the indicator tests and the pediatrician couldn’t be convinced to prescribe meds. I got tired of the school psychologist continually trying to tell me he had a neurological disorder or probably was having petit mal seizures. Hmmm, she thought she could recognize adhd, petit mal seizures and a neurological disorder, but somehow managed to miss a learning disability (dyscalculia) that has since been diagnosed! I read Alfie Kohn’s Feel Bad Education and the book was a major turning point for me. I decided to homeschool. He’s a completely different kid. I get it that it’s not feasable or desirable for most parents, but it was an incredible turn around for this kid. To be honest, I believe what I’m doing is changing the course of this kid’s life from what surely would have become a neurological disorder (or drop-out or drug user or delinquent or suicidal…) if he stayed in the school setting. I feel terrible everytime I come across another parent embroiled in trying to “fix” their kid because they are dealing with the same BS with the school blaming the kid for being impaired — never is it a curriculum, teaching or testing issue.
I guess reformers do not believe that children can suffer, or can be induced to suffer, from anxiety, depression, and so forth, right?
They are making kids hate and fear school. That should be reason enough to stop the madness.
Here is an interesting article explaining the need for recess in school and how the lack of it is causing to many children to unnecessarily labeled ADHD.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/07/08/why-so-many-kids-can‘t-sit-still-in-school-today/
This is a major conversation to be had AND yet all of the symptoms mentioned are also indicative of too much media exposure or “screen time,” which changes brain chemistry as a drug would. What is the mental heath profession’s stance on the “plug-in drug”?
The chronology of increased media exposure and testing craze have been on a similar trajectory over the past 20 years. Even symptomatic obesity is shared by these two lifestyles, with physical activity during school hours dangerously low for children whose brains are not developed fully.
Movement builds neuro-connections, relieves stress, and develops fine and gross motor-skills. Ironically, the acceptable outlets of movement in many communities are organized sports, where obedience, robotic behavior, and submission to authority is the accepted “rigor.” The days of autonomous child play (well into the tweens) have gone the way of carbon paper.
It is easy to blame the profession(s) for these ills, whether it is Bill Gates or a lowly classroom teacher, for this horrible discriminatory abuse of children, and the crushing of their spirits. The source of traumatic stress encompasses so much more than what is happening in the political arena and just as much to do with the choices we make for children the other 4/5 of the week’s time they are not on school property…
Society is indeed dysfunctional (FUBAR)! I have been a teacher for 23 years, and I can confirm that Common Core is an example of how creeping dysfunction can come into a system! Our FUBAR society is even more reason for schools to provide a positive ” healthy” environment, rather than an authoritarian test obsessed environment of “cruelty” and “punishment”. I totally believe that the “bullies” who support this abuse to children have Sadistic Personalities!
Children spend more face time with teachers than with parents, especially those with working parents or after school daycare. Yes, I agree there is environmental stress everywhere for children, but from my experience as a veteran kindergarten teacher, there is a dramatic increase in chronic and damaging stress now coming from the school environment. With CCSS, children’s social and emotional needs are being neglected, while they are being “smothered” with age inappropriate “crap” designed by corporate “impostors” and snake oil salesmen. My kindergartners only have a 15 minute recess daily. Learning Centers and Creative Play have been deleted from our schedule, along with art and music. Five year olds are now expected to sit in desks for 7 hours daily doing CCSS literacy worksheets to prepare for two standardized reading tests. Those who can’t sit still are “disciplined” with a color “red” to take home, and when it continues, they are recommended for an ADHD evaluation that will usually result in “medication”. My performance rating is to be measured by their tests. I feel disrespected and devalued as a teacher, and I hate being used to perpetuate this abuse to children.
How many of kids’ actual WAKING hours are spent in school? It’s actually much more than 1/5 of the week- many kids spend up to 45 hours a week in school, which is ONE HALF of a kids’ waking hours, if they are awake for 14 hours a day. Also, I guess you didn’t notice that kids nowadays are required to use computers and electronics much more than before, so pretty silly to blame parents. My own pre-k son, who is FOUR, was required to sit in computer lab for 45 minutes every day, while recess was nonexistent. Don’t you DARE act like parents are causing more damage to kids’ well-being than the horrible changes in school policies. It is almost impossible to undo the damage that is being caused from the time spent in school.
Click to access Joint%20Statement%20on%20Core%20Standards_(418%20).pdf