For years, I used to see this graffiti in the New York City subways and on random walls: “Question authority.”
This is the message from Yong Zhao, who was born and educated in China and now is a professor at the University of Oregon.
In this post, EduShyster interviews Zhao about his new book, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China Has the Best (and the Worst) Education System.
She questions his views about testing, PISA, and the future of education reform.
Yong Zhao is refreshingly candid. He thinks America became a great nation because it did not put too much emphasis on standardized testing.
Standardized testing, he argues, is synonymous with authoritarianism. It kills the creativity, the divergent thinking, the skeptical mindset that is necessary for entrepreneurialism and innovation.
He says it is not too late to change, not too late to escape “the witch that cannot be killed.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If David Letterman wrote a top ten list for what made America great, do you really believe standardized testing would be on it, much less at the top? Can we get real here?
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Alfie Kohn told a story in one of his books in which he wore a button saying “Question Authority”. The students he worked with that day asked him something like “what makes you such an authority on questions”?
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See my long excerpt from Yong Zhao’s book under today’s posting “The International Statistics That Matter Most.”
Question authority? We could end up suffering the loss of such an irreplaceable figure as LAUSD Supt. John Deasy.
😱
Or make it known, for all to see, that the Emperors and Empresses of Rheephorm have no clothes… [Mental images, none pleasant…]
😕
And everyone knows we need their rules a la CCSS and its conjoined twin, high-stakes standardized testing.
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Well, not quite everyone:
“Any fool can make a rule,
And any fool can mind it.” [Henry David Thoreau]
But, but, but, aren’t we on a slippery slope to perdition when we question the education establishment aka the self-styled leaders of the “education reform” movement? Don’t we put the ability to creatively disrupt of Bill Gates and Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee and Paul Vallas and Wendy Kopp and Chris Christie and Cami Anderson and Rahm Emanuel and the rest of that select crowd, overflowing with noblesse oblige, at risk? And put their well-thought-out plans like iPads and MISIS on the road to ruin?
“If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticize.” [Tacitus]
Ah, I could take that as an allusion to that old “democracy” canard…
😏
Er, um, works for me. Thanks to a very dead and very old and very Roman guy for reminding us.
😎
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I know what graffiti I would like to see on subway walls, billboards and on the letterhead of every school board and mayor’s office in the nation:
“Schools are not businesses, they are a public good.” – Diane Ravitch
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There is a PISA rank that we will never hear about from the fake education reformers. In the “relative performance in problem solving” the U.S. is almost tied for 2nd place. China is ranked 2nd to last at #42.
What was surprising to me was where Finland ranked in problem solving. I think it might surprise you too.
The PISA report says, “As in other assessment areas, there are wide differences between and within countries in the ability of 15-year-olds to fully engage with and solve non-routine problems in real-life contexts. These differences, however, do not always mirror those observed in the core PISA domains of mathematics, reading and science. Just because a student performs well in core school subjects doesn’t mean he or she is proficient in problem solving.”
Here’s a link to my Blog post on this:
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“The Zhao of Education”
Graffiti on the wall
Says “Question one and all”
As Zhao of Ed
Has wisely said
“Without it, we will fall”
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Imagine, intelligent graffiti.
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“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls..”
You’re old enough to remember the original, no, Lloyd? : )
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Christine,
Most of the graffiti I’m familiar with is from the community and the schools where I taught. The gangs marked their turf with the gang logo on a nightly basis and on campus, the custodians would drive around before 7 AM in the morning and paint over them, but I often arrived in time to see some of it before it vanished behind another layer of paint.
Artistic taggers were a distinct minority in that community because the gangs would cover their art with gang tags.
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Yep, I’m familiar with that dynamic, too, Lloyd.
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The silence is too loud! Thanks Christine
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Children are like popcorn. Some pop early, some pop late (Yong Zhao video)
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Zhao is not only very astute, but he’s also very funny.
His (tongue in cheek) explanation for why countries like mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and Japan do so well on PISA? they use chopsticks
Imagine where we could go as a country if we had someone like Zhao as Secretary of Education.
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