A reader responds to the friendly exchange between Carol Burris and Robert Pondiscio:
| I think Carol’s penultimate sentence is the critical point, around which all of us should rally. Cognitive non-engagement plagues our schools — indeed, the regnant standardized testing regime demands it — and those in power are promoting it more and more. To be sure, there are differences, among those of us who love learning, about what the *relative* priority between inspiration and conveying knowledge should be. But that debate of yore is one we no longer have the luxury of indulging in. Now, rote learning and an obsessive emphasis on just math and reading — a curriculum thus devoid of substantive richness, projects, self-direction, or any other humanistic values — dominates. The Relay techniques in the video show all this in reductio ad absurdum fashion. It, and the mandatory cognitive non-engagement it represents, has to stop. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How can it stop unless the high stakes testing is stopped? At least until its importance is diminished? Unless educators speak out about this absurdness i.e. The “sending a little energy” promoted on the relay school’s videos, this will continue to be pushed onto newcomers to this noble profession as “great teaching” as will the “teaching to the test”
I should have been clearer. The pronoun “it” in the last sentence refers to the standardized testing regime.