Denis Ian warns that “competency based education,” online teaching and assessment, spells the end of education and of childhood. It is not just a threat to public education. It is a mortal threat to education of any kind.
He posted this comment:
Competency based education isn’t a mirage anymore. It’s here.
Beyond the view of skirmishes now underway across an array of states, is an emerging reality that … in a very short while … this destroying reform will have razed an American institution to a mound of rubble.
And in its place … for as far as the eye can see … will stand drive-thru learning centers offering kiosk-educations from a B. F. Skinner touch-screen that will supply the finger-pointer with all they need to succeed in a life of rich monotony.
That’s what your now titling schools are going to look like. And that’s your child’s purgatory. Dante would have had devilish fun imagining the distinct horror levels of academic hell that await children in their most crucial years.
Kindergarten is now the Boot Camp Moment. Classroom drill instructors seem unbothered shoving 70 month-olds into a rush-hour of academic traffic … because some basement gnome alleges it’s the ideal moment to vaccinate them with “grit” and “rigor”. And these academic tykes are denied recess and songs and giggles … because those would be indicators of unseriousness. And education is, above all else, an extra-serious business. Even for cherubs still ill-at-ease knotting their own sneakers.
The elementary time seems destined to be called the Tablet Years. The Mario Bros. Educational Principles will rule the day as students win points and pile up Magical No. 2 Pencils as they are prompted from one level to the next. Competency-based-education will erase all of those annoying human variables and every learner who reaches Level Extreme will see their names glitter in on-screen pixie dust. And an 8 X 10 screen-shot of that conquering moment will become the new moving-up document.
Middle school will usher in The Skinner Stage … when on-screen accountability and specially-tapered curricula designs will suffocate all of those aggravating teenage twitches and quirks. School magistrates will homogenize this stage of maturity so that no nail stands up … and individuality is mocked as antithetical narcissism that is thoroughly unacceptable. Creativity will be dubbed a day-dreaming activity … time-consuming musing more symptomatic of a sloth than of genius.
High school will be The Divergent Time… when, at long last, the future of every young adult will become crystal clear. Youngsters will be endlessly nudged in this or that career pathway … justified by the overwhelming mounds of data that can be Hansel and Greteled all the way back to the days when joy was first run out of their very brand-new lives.
And at every level, parents will lose more and more control of their children. They will be less and less invited by school authorities to take part in the joy-remembering rites of passage we all associate with growing up. And that is all by design because the very last thing these new educational absolutists want is any mother or father acting as though they have any regency at all over their own child’s education.
Orwell yourself beyond the moment and come to terms with what awaits us all on the horizon of touch-screen scholarship. Huxley yourself into the world of tomorrow when your children will have been programmed and plugged into lifetime situations based not on their passions but on some algorithmic prescription burped out by some electronic-ouija-motherboard.
If you are doubting of this .. and too, too many are … examine what the last half-decade has wrought. In the blink of an eye, schools have been systematically transformed, childhood recalibrated, and parents richly tattooed as adversaries. Government now dictates to the schools, and politicians have morphed into carnival barkers for every profiteer determined to get their slice of the Big Education pie.
And all the while, half-a-generation has already endured this child-abusing gauntlet of educational malpractice as they are guinea-pigged into blazing trails in the brave new world of scholastic madness.
And that is the great tilt. What is it you are going to do about it?
And if you decide to do nothing … then stand ready to watch their lives topple into misery in a very grave new world.
Denis Ian
So TRUE! Thanks, Ian and Diane. CBE is a worn out idea that has been tried before. This time around, it’s worse than ever. Where do the deformers get their YAHOO ideas? Oh forgot, from NON-Educators wanting to make $$$$$ of the backs of kids, teachers, and in the end the public schools of this country. SAD.
This is the flipside of over-optimism about educational technology. “Competency-based education” is just not that powerful a concept. It is not even a fully developed idea, really. Where are these competencies? The Common Core standards? Are competencies even different than standards? This is an over-reaction to over the top hype.
I remember the “minimum competency” movement of the late 1960s, early i970s. That was a reaction to the Brunerian belief that scholars and researchers working at the most advanced levels of their disciplines should serve as the experts for content and methods of inquiry taught in K-12 education.
A reversal of that post-Sputnik idea was brought about by the failure of the Brunerian inspired curriculum “Man: A Course of Study.” It failed to pass muster with parents and teachers (and members of Congress). Another contributor to the rise of the minimum competency movement was the “new math” of that era. It required the deployment of abstract reasoning skills that stymied parents in addition to many students.
The version of CBE being marketed is well suited to conventional content that can be mapped in conventional formats for delivery by computers, complete with video segments to illustrate ideas.
The immediate targets for CBE are math and the rules (and codified rules of thumb) for ELA. The Gates Foundation wants to get CBE as the norm for “delivery” of instruction in the Common Core K-12 ( he has not given up) and all of the so-called “general education” courses in college. His new data-mongering campaign for post-secondary education calls for reports on the percentage of students completing college level introductory courses in math and English respectively, during their first year. It also calls for postsecondary institutions to define their standards for “not college-ready” and for “college-ready” in math and English and to report the percentage of students who select a major in their first year after high school AND take three courses (9 credits) in that major during the first year.
I think these intrusions on postsecondary education by the Gates Foundation are one example of the way CBE thinking corrupts the idea of academic freedom, truncates attention to the value of interdisciplinary learning, and reduces inquiry to the production of well-worn answers to questions others have asked and answered; indeed answered in forms that leave aside all possibility of doubt about the “correct” answer. CBE is not designed to encourage critical and imaginative thinking. It is free of the poetry, the surprise, the wonderment, the anxieties that mark us all as human.
For the Gates version of postsecondary education and the value thereof, see http://www.ihep.org/sites/default/files/uploads/postsecdata/docs/resources/ihep_toward_convergence_low_2b.pdf, especially page iv, Table1-2
Or for more on this latest campaign to take over all of public education and determine what “data” will count, and the value of any degree or certificate see any of the eleven publications here. All forward a total revision of public postsecondary education to an “outcomes-only” model at http://www.ihep.org/postsecdata/mapping-data-landscape/national-postsecondary-data-infrastructure
Hey Laura, I posted your comment at Oped , at the link to Diane’s post
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Michigan-Mom-The-State-Sa-in-Best_Web_OpEds-American-Schools_Diane-Ravitch_Nclb_Public-Education-160926-688.html#comment619830
Denis Ian…Great article! In part, that is why I wrote, Free the Teachers: A Guide to Joyful Teaching and Learning. I believe teachers have great big brains and are capable of wonderful thinking on behalf of their students. Major publishers wouldn’t touch it because I was a bit pointed about the ‘money makers’ at the expense of our kids. Bravo to you!
So true. Add higher ed. When the Gates Foundation released its plan for higher ed last week, it included more data–which means more student time at computers–and convincing policy makers that they just don’t understand today’s college students.
There are several ways that this dystopian vision of education can be derailed.
The medical community can show the harmful effects of screen time on the developing brain.
Parents and children can revolt and refuse to participate in this abusive practice.
Social justice groups, unions and parents can pressure representatives to reject such harmful practice.
Citizens can band together and vote out any representatives that favor this nonsense.
Citizens can work to get the money out of politics, and work to overturn legislation that has monetized public schools.
I am sure there are other ways to do this. However, the theme that runs through all of these suggestions is unity and action. We need to unite and work together to fight against the corporate domination of public education. The river of corruption in our nation is very deep, and we need each other to work against the destructive power of billionaires and corporations.
As far as opting out, that’s what’s so insidious about CBE. It’s nearly the child’s whole education – nearly impossible to opt out of. Sure, parents can homeschool or send their kids to private school if they have the means to do so, but that’s what the rephormers want. But if you have to have your kid in public school, how do you opt out when many or most lessons are on the computer and daily tests follow such modules?
I agree. If this is the only option for students in a public school, parents may have to go to court and argue on health grounds or claim that this service does not constitute ‘adequate’ education, or however the state defines public education. We all know the outcome depends if the judge if corporate owned. Too bad we don’t know some retired hacker teachers that would like to spend their golden years in Russia!
So after I had my daily dose of depressing polls. No joy in being right this time. I went to my mail box and there from a friend was this short piece by Henry Giroux.
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/henry-giroux-on-the-pathology-of-politics-in-our-warfare-state
Cross posted at : http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Denis-Ian-Competency-Base-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education-Curriculum_Education-Technology_Educational-Crisis_Online-160926-160.html
Loved this one, Diane.
Orwell is watching Trump and Cruz and the charlatans who are taking overhear nation, and he sees the schools as the most crucial stepping stone to creating a dumbed down nation who will elect such critters.
Who will elect Trump , Cruz will be mainstream Republicans who smell the blood. They backed away from Trump when they thought he would lose. Now they are all coming home . The joy of a rt wing court for decades and the nails in the coffin of organized labor .
Did that fool Clinton really think Republicans would vote for her. As she alienated the youth vote. Down 18 points since the convention and its not going to Stein, Johnson or Trump
My gut tells me Hillary is no better! Bakke and Clinton are joined at the hip. Yuck.
Pinky,
Check your gut. It is malfunctioning if it sees no difference between Hillary and the racist, sexist xenophobic con man
“…and he sees the schools as the most crucial stepping stone to creating a dumbed down nation …”
J.T. Gatto had the same vision.
“Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what modern schooling teaches is
dumbness. It’s a religious idea gone out of control. You don’t have to accept that, though, to
realize this kind of economy would be jeopardized by too many smart people who understand too
much. I won’t ask you to take that on faith. Be patient. I’ll let a famous American publisher
explain to you the secret of our global financial success in just a little while. Be patient.
Jacques Ellul, whose book Propaganda is a reflection on the phenomenon, warned us that
prosperous children are more susceptible than others to the effects of schooling because they are
promised more lifelong comfort and security for yielding wholly:
Critical judgment disappears altogether, for in no way can there ever be
collective critical judgment….The individual can no longer judge for himself
because he inescapably relates his thoughts to the entire complex of values and
prejudices established by propaganda. With regard to political situations, he is
given ready-made value judgments invested with the power of the truth by…the
word of experts.
Old-fashioned dumbness used to be simple ignorance; now it is transformed from ignorance into
permanent mathematical categories of relative stupidity like “gifted and talented,” “mainstream,”
“special ed.” Categories in which learning is rationed for the good of a system of order. Dumb
people are no longer merely ignorant. Now they are indoctrinated, their minds conditioned with
substantial doses of commercially prepared disinformation dispensed for tranquilizing purposes.
The new dumbness is particularly deadly to middle- and upper-middle-class kids already made
shallow by multiple pressures to conform imposed by the outside world on their usually lightly
rooted parents. When they come of age, they are certain they must know something because their
degrees and licenses say they do. They remain so convinced until an unexpectedly brutal divorce,
a corporate downsizing in midlife, or panic attacks of meaninglessness upset the precarious
balance of their incomplete humanity, their stillborn adult lives.”
“We need to put sterile discussions of grading and testing,
discipline, curriculum, multiculturalism and tracking aside as distractions, as mere symptoms of
something larger, darker, and more intransigent than any problem a problem-solver could tackle
next week. Talking endlessly about such things encourages the bureaucratic tactic of talking
around the vital, messy stuff.”
Reblogged this on Saving school math and commented:
Kids need hammers.
Yes, it is exceptionally hard to opt-out of this when it pervades so much of your child’s education. And, many districts are not even reporting what programs are being used, or sharing what information is shared with them. Its a disgrace. Ed tech companies are raking in the dollars, while children and teachers are in worse and worse situations. It is a disgrace.
Here is another great blog post on the same topic, but with links to explanations and source material on the various components of CBE. https://wrenchinthegears.com/2016/09/23/from-neighborhood-schools-to-learning-eco-systems-a-dangerous-trade/
One part of this that is not being considered or discussed in depth is that the IT infrastructure requirements of CBE are such that any claims of cost savings are pie in the sky, this is just a transfer of spending on human salaries to all the parts of the tech sector, and as such also leaves the entire enterprise open to various kinds of hacking, both man made and natural. Considering the growing uncertainties and threats to our very future of the anthropocene epoch we are in, ones that we have created, it is a very bad idea to remove the essential knowledge of education from the human reservoir and place it solely in the brittle and vulnerable one of tech, of server farms. The human reservoir is far more resilient and distributed. The grid dependent tech reservoir requires constant high level maintenance and absent that has no capacity for the preservation of educational knowledge and expertise and its transmission forward through time, the human one does.
TRIGGER WARNING. Not that the fight against the abject stupidity of reform in general and CBE in particular isn’t depressing and daunting enough, there’s the context within which it is taking place that’s even worse. https://www.thenation.com/article/coming-instant-planetary-emergency/ Removing teachers as a reservoir of knowledge from society at a time like this is well beyond idiotic, it is absolutely suicidal. As I stated above, high tech IT systems as the reservoir of knowledge are far more vulnerable to complete loss than the human reservoir is by many orders of magnitude. The irony is that those pushing this, those in the tech sector itself are acutely aware of this and there are people in the tech sector whose sole job is to plan for it, but they are few in number and inadequately supported, normalcy bias and all that. The military and other governmental agencies are also involved, they know the threat is real, but the Pearsons and Gates and hedge fund shills of the world are in denial, blinded by greed for wealth, hubris, and the desire for control.
“To put the size of this consumption into even sharper relief – the 416.2 terawatt hours of electricity the world’s data centres used last year was significantly higher than the UK’s total consumption of about 300 terawatt hours.” http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/global-warming-data-centres-to-consume-three-times-as-much-energy-in-next-decade-experts-warn-a6830086.html
“Massive as data centre energy use may already be, this is nothing to what lies in store, analysts warn. Ian Bitterlin, Britain’s foremost data centre expert and a visiting professor at the University of Leeds, says the amount of energy used by data centres is doubling every four years – despite the innovations in hardware that massively increase their capacity to store data. As a result, analysts forecast that data centres will consume roughly treble the amount of electricity in the next decade.”
IT LOOKS LIKE THE REFORMERS ARE SOLIDLY IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER CAMP. They are making a direct contribution to the destruction of the future they claim they want to improve.
And it’s not just electricity, either. Data centers also use a TON of water. Utah just turned down a massive Facebook data center that would have created only 300 jobs. Facebook was demanding tax breaks of $250,000 from the school district alone. AND, the estimated water use for the center per day, in the second-driest state in the nation. http://www.sltrib.com/home/4252488-155/utah-power-regulators-sign-off-on
It’s like civilization as a cross between James Clavell’s “The Children’s Story” and Lois Lowry’s “The Giver”.
We all need to fight tooth-and-nail against this two-headed monster.
What concerns me about this “movement” is it’s size. It reminds me of Bush Jr’s invasion of Iraq. Millions of people, in the US and worldwide, were taking to the streets in protest. But the ships were already on their way. The money had been invested and the administration was resolute. There was no turning back.
We must and will fight this monster…and all the puppeteers who control it. But you can be very, very sure that they won’t back down.
Argh!!! It just makes me so angry! I so wish I could just give Bill Gates a call and tell him to keep his hands off of our kids.
He’s so out of his league in education but acts as though it’s his kingdom.
Sounds Hellish and realistic.
Competency-based education is absolutely the right idea. Badly implemented it is a disaster for kids. We tried it in Greenwich, CT which is one of the most richly funded and resources districts in the country. We could not pull it off because our teachers and administrators could not execute. It is just too far away from the 20th Century factory model of education that they know or had learned at Teachers College. We called it personalized learning and it was 100% student NOT teacher focused. We spent $20mil on tech to make it work. Tech worked fine. Our leadership could not execute. You can have all the good of school communities with kids and do personalized learning…but not with the current cadre of Superintendents, Deputies and most Principals. It takes radical innovation and leadership. Conformist culture and Unionism make sure it will fail.