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Justin Parmenter: A Defense of Creative Writing in the Age of Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2018 //
30

English teacher Justin Parmenter writes that creative writing is one of the victims of standardized testing and data-driven mania.

https://teachersandwritersmagazine.org/a-defense-of-creative-writing-in-the-age-of-standardized-testing-4460.htm

He writes:

“Educators are under enormous pressures stemming from a data-driven culture most recently rooted in No Child Left Behind and its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, in which the ultimate measure of professional and academic success is a standardized test score. As a result of this standardized testing culture, many of our English students spend way too much time reading random passages which are completely detached from their lives and answering multiple choice questions in an attempt to improve test results. In many classrooms, writing has become little more than an afterthought. Creative writing, in particular, is seen by some as a frivolous waste of time because its value is so difficult to justify with data.

“Two decades before the advent of No Child Left Behind, the research of influential literacy professor Gail Tompkins identified seven compelling reasons why children should spend time writing creatively in class:

*to entertain
*to foster artistic expression
*to explore the functions and values of writing
*to stimulate imagination
*to clarify thinking
*to search for identity
*to learn to read and write

“The majority of Tompkins’s outcomes of creative writing could never be measured on today’s standardized tests. Indeed, over the same period that standardized reading tests have pushed writing in English classes to the sidelines, efforts to evaluate student writing on a broad, systematic scale have dwindled. Measuring student writing is expensive, and accurately assessing abstract thinking requires human resources most states aren’t willing to pony up. It’s much cheaper to score a bubble sheet.

“Measurement and assessment aside, the soft skills that we cultivate through regular creative writing with our students have tremendous real-world application as well as helping to promote the kind of atmosphere we want in our classrooms. After many years as an English teacher, I’ve found that carving out regular time for creative writing in class provides benefits for me and my students that we simply don’t get from other activities.”

Writing is thinking, put to paper or screen, with the opportunity to clarify and edit one’s thoughts. It can’t be taught by formula or by rote. It is a joy for some, a struggle for others. It is a luxury available to all. There is reward in knowing that your thoughts matter.

Not everyone will become a writer, but everyone needs to learn how to express his or her thoughts clearly. Everyone has a voice. Everyone must learn how and when to use it. These are lessons that standardized tests can neither teach nor test.

 

Categories Education Reform, Language

The Language Police Are Back (Psst: They Never Went Away)

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2018 //
23

 

 

Much has been written about the ludicrous banning of words at various government agencies.words like “climate change” and “fetus” and “diversity” are on the outs in government documents, while Nazi rallies and chants are okay, at least among Trump’s alt-right fan base. Alan Singer has a clever idea:

“To help teachers address the official and unofficial word bans in their classes, I propose a “High School Homework Challenge.” Students should write a coherent paragraph using all ten words and phrases officially and unofficially banned by the Trump Administration. For extra-credit, text your paragraph to Donald Trump at @realDonaldTrump.”

For me, there is a certain sense of deja vu about this latest burst of word censorship.

Nearly twenty years ago, I was on the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). President Clinton suggested the creation of voluntary national tests. At first, he thought that the Department of Education could do the job, but under criticism, turned it over to NAEP, which had been developing and administering tests since the early 1970s.

A consortium of major publishers won a contract for $50 Million to create the new tests. NAGB got lost in a debate about what would be voluntary about the new national tests and who could say “no, thank you.” States? Districts? Schools? Parents? Students?

we met with the publishers who were going to write the tests, and in the course of the briefing, each of us get a 30-page “bias and sensitivity” guidelines, a list of words, phrases, and images that could not appear on the tests. They were banned because they offended some group. They were the pet peeves of feminists, ethnic groups, rightwing groups, lobbyists for the elderly, and for every imaginable aggrieved minority.

I was appalled. Tests could not mention Halloween, witches, death, cancer, mice, roaches, nuclear war, pumpkins, yachts, ten-speed bicycles, swimming pools, on and on.

Puzzled, I contacted friends in the education publishing industry and learned that every company had similarly guides, some of which were even more extensive. I collected as many of these guides as I could get my hands on. There was considerable overlap, but there were important additions, such as images and stereotypes that were banned from textbooks. For example, the word “evolution” is almost universally banned, as are depictions of anatomically correct cows, rainbows, owls, a man with his hands in his pockets, poverty, women performing domestic chores, and older people sitting in a rocker or using a walker or cane. In the ideal world, children are never disobedient, women are construction workers, men bake cookies, and old people are never infirm.

I even discovered books that gave lists of hundreds of banned words, like “Achilles’ heel” or “Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

I published a book in 2003 about this widespread but unknown censorship, imposed by left and right. It was called The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.” It contained a list of nearly 1,000 banned words, phrases, and images.

This is magical thinking at its silliest. Some people think that if we don’t say certain words, we can make the underlying behavior or activity disappear.

The climate will change even if no one says those two words.

The hard questions are papered over by the Language Police. What do we do about hate speech? How should we respond to incitements to violence? What about the person who shouts “fire” in a crowded theater? Yes, there are lines to be drawn. There is a real difference between hurt feelings and mob violence that threatens lives.

 

 

 

Categories Language

Center for Disease Controls Told to Ban Such Words as “Fetus,” “Vulnerable,” and “Transgender”

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2017 //
31

The Trump administration has ordered the Centers for Disease Control to remove certain words from its budget documents.

This is typical rightwing magical thinking. If you don’t name something, it doesn’t exist. They assume. I wrote called “The Language Police” about the efforts by pressure groups to control the language in texts and on tests, which reached elaborate and ridiculous heights.

“The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

“Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.”

Ten years ago, I wrote a book about censorship of textbooks and tests by the education publishing industry. It is called “The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.” There are hundreds and hundreds of words and images that are banned from educational materials, to placate some pressure group from the right or the left or from some interest group. Every publisher has a guidebook of banned words, phrases, and images. The guides have been circulated from publisher to publisher, and they look very much alike. Children will never see a story in a school book that shows mother in the kitchen cooking, although she may see mother driving a truck. They will never see old people walking with a cane or rocking on the porch, although they may see them up on the roof hammering in a loose shingle. The list of words and images that are banned are hilarious and also frightening. Look around and you will see how ineffective this censorship has been in changing attitudes and even language.

I can safely predict that Trump’s ban on the chosen words, plus “climate change,” will change nothing. People will still use the words, and the underlying phenomena will still exist.

Categories Ignorance, Language
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