A few weeks ago, educators Heinz-Dieter Meyer of the State University of New York and Katie Zahedi, principal of the Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, New York, wrote a protest letter against the international horse race inspired by OECD’s PISA examinations. They gathered other signers and went public. Since then, the letter has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, German, French, and Spanish, with Greek and Korean on the way.
PISA, they say, has encouraged short-term thinking like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, in which nations look to raise test scores to be competitive with other nations, instead of developing in-depth programs to enrich the education of their young people in the many ways that tests don’t measure.
Please open the link and consider signing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
signed
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Yes, we need more “education of their young people in the many ways tests don’t measure”. We pay little concern over the affective domain, like honesty, integrity, self-denial, altruism, faith, love, hope, perseverance, charity, etc. Yet, these are just as important as cognitive-processing, and those that believe and teach about multiple-intelligences recognize the importance of this “social-concern/be-a-good-neighbor/good samaritan”.
Is being the next Mother Teresa just as important as being the next STEM major? I think it is, and maybe even more so. Having compassionate, ethical and charitable citizens may do more for GDP than just having more skilled factory workers (because if you have the former there will be less need for all the social services needed to remediate and fix bad ethical choices, which are a drain on GDP).
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I think that a lot of these policy makers never learned these affective lessons and that’s why they don’t pay attention to them. How many of these “reformers” have learned honesty, integrity, altruism, love, etc.? NONE, as far as I can tell. At least those traits sure don’t appear when they make education policy.
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Yes, if your capitalism is just that (the belief in the sole value of capital), then you will have no socialism (the belief in the values of humans, the most important “capital”). If Wall Street could only find a value and monetize altruism, then maybe it would have economic value, besides the real and spiritual value it already has. Jesus said it is better to give than receive, but capitalists stumble on that teaching.
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I,832 signatures are already on the letter. While the document asks signers for a title,
some have designated themselves as, “Concerned Parents”. I assume all are welcome.
Please consider forwarding the letter to parents, colleagues. etc.
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