Here is a terrific article about a new video game: “No Pineapple Left Behind.”
Friends, our federal education policy has reached some absurdity and stupidity and child abuse that the best way to explain it is through satire.
Soon, as we continue on the path charted by George W. Bush, Margaret Spellings, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, and their devotees, we will be an international laughing stock. No other nation tests every child every year. No other nation subjects little children to 8-hour tests, no other nation rates teachers by the test scores of their students. We are breaking new ground. But it is not innovation. It is a misplacing of bad business techniques into education.
This house of cards will not stand.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In “No Pineapple Left Behind” an evil wizard turns all of the students to pineapples. Pineapples are very simple; all they do is take tests and get grades. If they get good grades, their school makes more money. But if left unattended, pineapples turn back into children. Children are very complicated and much harder to deal with. You are the principal and you have to run the school.”
Sounds all too familiar! First children were compared to plugs and outlets in need of standardization and uniformity; then toasters; then widgets (kidgets) and now, pineapples, though at least this is satire.
The most important part of your post is:
“Friends, our federal education policy has reached some absurdity and stupidity and child abuse that the best way to explain it is through satire.”
And of those three, the most serious is that it is abusive. And because it is abusive, it must be stopped – by caring politicians, boards of education, administrators, teachers and support staff and most of all, by caring, concerned and informed parents.
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Kidgets! I hadn’t heard of that before. The development team has been discussing whether we should call in-game money “dollars” or something more creative. I’ll run “kidgets” by them and see what they think…
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George W. Bush, Margaret Spellings, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, and their devotees, we will be an international laughing stock.
The list is good for starters but you missed one of my favorite scam artists: Secretary of Education Rod Paige who, after calling teachers “terrorists” and being exposed as a fraud –he did not suceed in performing the Texas Miracle that one of the bushes or shrubs though he had achieved–nevertheless headed USDE, then left to have a lucrative third career with the Chartwell group. (The “bushes and shrubs” comes from Molly Ivins, deceased Texas based journalist who, like the still-living host of this blog, was a wonferful critic of foolishness in high places).
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I cross-posted to the link ,
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Satirical-Video-Game-Skewe-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education_Education-Curriculum_Education-Funding_Manipulate-141004-102.html#comment514671
and I added this comment at the end:
For those of you who follow my quick links to all the important events in the 15,880 school districts, in order to witness the manipulation which is ending public education, this link presents a satirical ‘take’ on the destruction of this crucial INSTITUTION by the simple process of ending teacher input ,and mandating top-down policies that fail.
As Diane Ravitch says about this game “Friends, our federal education policy has reached some absurdity and stupidity and child abuse that the best way to explain it is through satire.
“Soon, as we continue on the path charted by George W. Bush, Margaret Spellings, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, and their devotees, we will be an international laughing stock. No other nation tests every child every year. No other nation subjects little children to 8-hour tests, no other nation rates teachers by the test scores of their students. We are breaking new ground. But it is not innovation. It is a misplacing of bad business techniques into education.
“This house of cards will not stand.”
And to Diane and my peers at this teacher’s room, I say — I hope so!
However, I have no illusions about the players at the top and the wealth and power they hold; it is not merely the privateers whose motives to monetarize education as a business– the manipulators behind the scene,– beyond Gates, Broad &Walton– are clones of the Koch Brothers, barons who believe that THEIR version of America, or democracy must be the only one… and THEY will END our public schools with an even greater assault of money to corrupt legislators, school administrators, local school officials! They will, behind the curtain of silence that their ownership of the media ensures, convince an ignorant, stressed public that it is for their own good.
We must fight, and never give up, in the face of this, and be the Greater Fools.
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Awesome post, Diane.
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Here’s a link to my blog piece on the same game: “No Pineapple Left Behind – the Consolation of Satire and Video Games.”
http://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/no-pineapple-left-behind-the-consolation-of-satire-and-video-games/
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A not-so-veiled reference to the now infamous “The Pineapple and the Hare.”
Google “pineapple” and “hare” and “Daniel Pinkwater.”
I give one link below—
Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/04/20/daniel-pinkwater-on-pineapple-exam-nonsense-on-top-of-nonsense/
The first six paragraphs of the above:
[start quote]
Eighth-graders who thought a passage about a pineapple and a hare on New York state tests this week made no sense, take heart: The author thinks it’s absurd too.
“It’s hilarious on the face of it that anybody creating a test would use a passage of mine, because I’m an advocate of nonsense,” Daniel Pinkwater, the renowned children’s author and accidental exam writer, said in an interview. “I believe that things mean things, but they don’t have assigned meanings.”
Pinkwater, who wrote the original story on which the test question was based, has been deluged with comments from puzzled students — and not for the first time. The passage seems to have been recycled from English tests in other states, bringing him new batches of befuddled students each time it’s used.
The original story, which Pinkwater calls a “fractured fable,” was about a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. By the time it got onto standardized tests, however, it had doubled in length and become a race between a hare and a talking pineapple, with various other animals involved. In the end, the animals eat the pineapple.
The tests can be used to determine whether a student is promoted to the next grade. Once new teacher evaluations are put in place, the tests will also affect teachers’ careers.
Pearson PLC, which created the test as part of a five-year, $32 million state contract, referred questions to the New York State Education Department. The department hasn’t returned requests for comment since Wednesday.
[end quote]
Anyone else ready to join me for some CCSS decontextualized ‘closet reading’? I promise to bring extra flashlight batteries if someone closes the door and locks us in.
Although, to be honest, I’m not as excited as I used to be about ‘closet’ reading since I read the posting on this blog today entitled “This Is What Close Reading Looks Like in First Grade.” David Coleman will be sorely disappointed [although I know he doesn’t care a, er, fig newton, what I think] but that kid made a lot of sense:
[start quote] This idiocy is obvious even to 6-year olds. One said to me yesterday: “Teacher, why do they think I can answer those questions when I can’t read yet and they won’t let the computer read it to me?” [end quote]
I guess, like some TFA critics, I don’t have the ‘right corps member mindset.’
[for phrase, see blog of Gary Rubinstein, 2/22/2014, “Guest Post Series. Part One: How Interning for TFA Convinced me of its Injustice.”]
😏
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