We have all heard that students should learn to think critically and to take charge of their learning. Here is a story of a student who did.
Reader Linda Jones left this comment on the blog:
Many years ago, when standardized testing was just entering the mainstream of education, I had the privilege of talking to a junior in high school who refused to take the test.
Now this was in the 70s, so I really mean a long – time – ago — long before accountability became fashionable. The principal was having a meltdown because this 1 student just said, “no” to taking the annual achievement test! Frantic, in the face of such defiance, he ordered me to find out what was going on and “make that student take the test!” I was not sure how one would extract reliable results for any assessment if the participant was not willing to divulge information. It seemed to me that even physical, emotional or social coercion could only produce questionable validity. I complied with the request to find out what was going on. I asked the student why they dared challenge the status quo by not submitting the contents of their mind as required.
The student answered, “I will not take the test because they will use the information from those tests to make decisions about my education and life that they do not have the right to make. (Civil rights?) They do not know me as a person, I am more than numbers on a scale. You can make me sit in a room and place a test in front of me but you can not force me to take a test”.
I have never forgotten the weight of the profound truth spoken that day. Why should anyone submit to such an invasion of their person. Decisions about the educational experience of a any child should be based on the deepest possible understanding of the whole child as the result of a trusting relationship. Not a score on a scale ment to sort and label children for recycling.
Accountability, judgement, sorting, labels – are we talking about human children or sheet metal specs? So much of the brain research points to the power of relationship and joy for optimal learning. If you truly understand relationship, you know that accountability results in destroyed relationship. What if your best friend made you accountable for all of your activity? Once you are asked to account, all assumption of trust evaporates.
You can hear the word “accountability” echo across the land as trust and relationship drain away. Hold the child accountable! No, hold the parent accountable! No, hold the teacher, the principal, the BOE, the state, the congress, the president, the world accountable! Holding another accountable, removes their need to be accountable. It removes the responsibility for their behavior one step away from where it should be. I am accountable, I am responsible, I am empowered to address that with which I have been intrusted.
Thinking and decision making are human behaviors. Human behaviors are learned. The very humanity of teaching and learning is based on trust and the willing exchange between learner and teacher. Stop pointing fingers, stop placing blame! We need to stop acting like we are programed to act involuntarily, helpless, and imprisoned. If you want accountability, look in the mirror because that is where it starts. The child is the least powerful – empower him/her with wisdom. Fear is not a substitute for love. Tests are not gods to whom we must kneel in blind obedience.
I am proud to have known that 70s opt-outer. No test was taken that day or any other day. Teaching and learning ruled the day!
Don’t say, oh, but you don’t understand. I do understand, I got into education because I knew at a very personal level that the system was in great need of improvement. 1966-present. I have never been satisfied with the system, never! I have worked at many different levels, I am still working. I still see passionate, bright, child centered professionals working against the flood of cynical, so called, “accountability” measures. You do not have to have a microscope to see these bright creatures of the profession. However in your effort to eradicate the few “pests”, you may destroy all life and love of learning.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
“I will not take the test because they will use the information from those tests to make decisions about my education and life that they do not have the right to make. (Civil rights?) They do not know me as a person, I am more than numbers on a scale.”
If we do nothing else, I hope we can let each and every student embrace this student’s words.
And today in small town America school districts continue to wield their abusive powers. I read this Story by Mark Naison and it made me cry!! How are these things allowed to continue? Where are the checks and balance?
If you can get through this story to the end and not be affected it would be amazing!!!
http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2015/05/ajs-plight-horrendous-tale-of-racism.html?m=1
“And today in small town America school districts continue to wield their abusive powers.”
And how did you come up with that amazingly simplistic thinking generalization of a statement???
Simple…The more things change the more they stay the same!
Principals having meltdowns abusing children and getting away with it unchecked. It grows and festers and becomes AJ
And that only/mainly occurs in small towns??
When education is about sorting, it is not education. (It is…sorting.) In our society sorting usually means those who will and those who will not have a realistic shot at getting a decent job. From the 1920s to the 1980s mass public education in the US sorted kids in this way, but the results of this sorting were muted by a strong economy. Many people criticized the obvious sorting function of public schools…but, and here is the main point, for many people sorting did not mean most students could not find their way to a decent, stable, line of work, one that would provide them with a middle class standard of living. (This reality was truer for Whites than for Blacks, of course.) Because the US economy was dynamic kids who were sorted into the “loser” category could still “make it” if they had other resources (moxy, family ties, good looks, luck, cunning, racial identification).
But we now have such a stagnant economy that the sorting mechanism really does matter, in a way it never did. Inequality such as has not been seen since the 1920s translates pretty directly into stagnation for the majority of young people–and this situation makes the sorting function of public schooling more invidious than it has ever been. Black and Hispanic kids have always known this, for obvious reasons, but now all kids but those who come from the very wealthiest families face this nasty, bleak, reality.
This reality is one of those things most people just do not want to face, because it means there is no solution short of confronting the elites who benefit from the current state of things. Bernie Sanders, who may be the only national candidate who’s talking about these things, is really quite a moderate fellow by historical standards. The fact that he is portrayed as a flaming radical indicates how scared elites are about admitting what we all know from everyday experience.
Real education is not about sorting kids; it is about guiding them to develop their passions into remarkable skills and meaningful endeavors. It is about “fulfilling human potential,” not about keeping a nasty game of musical chairs going. It requires a society that welcomes change and innovation for everyone, not a society that must use force and intimidation to keep people from talking about the reality everyone experiences everyday.
Unlike traditional, and poor, societies, like India, where everyone seems to accept that improvement means either migration or having family connections, wealthy societies, like ours, must deal with a vast population of people who expect and demand more than they currently get. These expectations are powerful forces…they can be used for good and for evil ends.
Our struggle is to use our high expectations about what we expect from life to advance everyone’s lives. No easy task.
Perfectly stated! Helping children connect to diverse environments and people, AND helping children discover their passions should be the priority. And how is this done? By making the learning experience the reward rather than the grade, the sticker, and/or the placement on a bar graph. Sadly, we are encouraging self-centeredness and prejudice by placing so much emphasis on efficiency, competition/sorting and external rewards.
This is not really directed at you, elsieberry, but your comment got me thinking. For the part of education that pertains strictly to becoming a productive member of society who is ideally capable of supporting themselves, internships, apprenticeships, and school-industry partnerships immediately come to mind for older students. Laying out a vision of what performance should look like would be essential. These opportunities, however, are built on a foundational set of abilities that address not only economic issues but our roles in civic society and in our own lives. We want our children to become adults who will lead productive lives that are both personally fulfilling as well as being of benefit to society. How we do that and what we think needs to be learned changes depending on age and maturity as well as on the personal inclinations of the individual. Building an educational structure that honors both the needs of the society and the individual and has the flexibility to endure is neither easy nor obvious. What should be fairly obvious, though, is that high stakes, standardized testing should not be a centerpiece of any plan for public education and the public good.
You are right.
Sorting is what “reform” is all about.
It’s basically the manufacturing model where you sort the “good” from the “bad” (wheat from chaff)
It’s all about producing a process that reduces variation in — ie standardizes — the output.
National standards and standardized testing are the means by which this is accomplished.
A standardized output is good for producing Walmart workers but not for producing creative, independent thinkers (which is just fine because the former are actually the goal)
Of course, the “bad’ product is just ‘thrown away” (and inevitably ends up in prison or on the street)
This is what folks like the Waltons are after.
A college professor of Childhood Psychology said we should have 1 teacher for every child and mental health clinics on every corner. He said this to our class in 1989. That is wisdom. We crowd students into rooms and expect a connection. We keep students worried about tests to maintain behavior in classrooms. It will be more expensive to have fewer students per teacher as is seen in tuitions at place like Deerfield, Philips Exeter, and Sidwell Friends that are upwards of $40,000 but lower teacher to student ratio is more effective and logical. This being said testing isn’t necessary. Teachers can assess student progress in a timely fashion rather than waiting for the TEST when there are fewer students. CLASS SIZE MATTERS for effective education of the whole person emotional, social, academic, physical, musical, etc…From a teacher and educational perspective the purpose of assessing is to help a student correct misunderstandings and influence skills development in a timely fashion. Testing should not be used to categorize and stigmatize, criticize, demonize and politicize. Unfortunately that is all the reformsters are using testing for these days. We don’t need test, especially expensive money daring tests we need SMALL class size.
…and the eradication of poverty.
My daughter is an excellent writer. For her standardized test essay question she argued why students should not have to answer standardized test essay questions.
Thank you for sharing that! I think I may know that student 😉
“If you truly understand relationship, you know that accountability results in destroyed relationship.”
Indeed. A Universal Truth, I suggest: For the better or for the worse, capabilities of a system emerge out of relationships between components of the system rather than out of any components themselves.
Could you translate that, please.
First, the way Russell Ackoff explains it and then a wrap up with Nit explaining it to Wit.
Ackoff:
“You can write, your hand can’t write, and that’s easy to demonstrate: Cut it off, put it on the table and watch what it does.”
Nothing.
“You can see, your eyes can’t see.
“You can think, your brain can’t think.
“And therefore, when you take a system apart, it loses its essential properties.”
To take a system apart means to disrupt relationships going on between system components. Do that sufficiently, the system will lose its essential properties then, at some point, may die.
You, of course, are an organic system. One of your essential properties is that of being capable to learn as a sentient being. You are capable to learn as a sentient being because of the normally cooperating biological relationships going on between all the organic components that make you you. Let those relationships be sufficiently disrupted – internally, as by cancer, for example; externally, as by draw-and-quarter or Klingon Disruptor, for example – you will lose your essential property to learn as a sentient being.
School is a social system. One of school’s essential properties is that of being capable to learn as an organization. School is capable to learn as an organization because of the normally cooperating learning relationships going on between all the people components that make school school. Let those relationships be sufficiently disrupted – internally, as by wrongheaded competition, for example; externally, as by Rheeform accountability, for example – school will lose its essential property to learn as an organization.
Earth is an ecological system. One of Earth’s essential properties is that of being capable to sustain human life. Earth is capable to sustain human life because of the normally cooperating evolutionary relationships going on between all biological and geological components that make Earth Earth. Let those relationships be sufficiently disrupted – internally, as by pollutants and greenhouse gases, for example; externally, as by meteorite strike, for example – Earth will lose its essential property to sustain human life.
And so on for every system of every kind.
Every component in a system exists in relationship with every other component in the system. Moreover, the system itself exists in relationships with all the bigger systems of which it is a component.
Now, here are Nit and Wit in conversation, where Nit explains to Wit “wetness” as a relationship going on between hydrogen and oxygen.
Thank you. It is going to take me awhile to digest all of this. I am uncomfortable with the word “learn” in connection with school. “Learn” to me implies sentience that I cannot easily ascribe to a concept (school as a social system). I am comfortable with the word evolve. Societies evolve based on inputs at various levels within their structure and not necessarily in predictable ways. I guess that is one reason I am not a fan of Danielson’s trying to define good teaching by breaking it down into parts. As you say, there is something about the whole that cannot be defined by its parts. Or, as I am sure we have all heard, ” the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Am I on the right track?
Like spelling bees, maybe we can also have teaching/learning bees. Like real bees endangered core members of biological systems by Monsanto and fellow corporate control flee era, our TLbees are core members of moral and intellectual systems that are endangered by another set of corporate controllers. This was a child of vision. Wonder where he is today?