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Rebecca Holcombe, a Hero of American Education

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2014 //
31

This is a good news story about a state commissioner of education who stood up and said, with quiet determination, that the emperor has no clothes.

That state commissioner is Rebecca Holcombe of Vermont. She wrote a clear and eloquent letter to the parents and caregivers of Vermont, explaining the punitive and incoherent nature of federal education policy, which (under NCLB) requires that every single school in Vermont be labeled low-performing, even though many national and international measures show that Vermont is a high-performing state. She explained that Vermont refused to apply for a waiver from NCLB offered by Secretary Duncan because it would have forced the state to evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores, which is unreliable and unfair to teachers and students.

Commissioner Holcombe wrote that Vermont believes that schools have purposes that are no less important (and perhaps more important) than test scores.

For her thoughtfulness, her integrity, her devotion to children, her understanding of the broad aims of education, and her courage in standing firm against ruinous federal policies, Rebecca Holcombe is a hero of American education. Most people go along with the crowd, even when doing so violates their sense of personal and professional ethics. Not Commissioner Holcombe. If our nation had more state commissioners like her, it would save our children from a mindless culture of test and punish that the federal department of education has imposed on them and our nation’s schools.

This is the letter that State Commissioner Holcombe wrote to every parent and caregiver in Vermont:

“Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), as of 2014, if only one child in your school does not score as “proficient” on state tests, then your school must be “identified” as “low performing” under federal law. This year, every school whose students took the NECAP tests last year is now considered a “low performing” school by the US Department of Education. A small group of schools were not affected by this policy this year because they helped pilot the new state assessment and so did not take the NECAPs last year. Because these schools had their federal AYP status frozen at 2013 levels, eight schools are not yet identified as low performing by federal criteria. However, had these school taken the NECAPs as well, it is likely that every single school in the state would have to be classified as “low performing” according to federal guidelines.

“The Vermont Agency of Education does not agree with this federal policy, nor do we agree that all of our schools are low performing.

In 2013, the federal Education Department released a study comparing the performance of US states to the 47 countries that participated in the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, one of the two large international comparative assessments. Vermont ranked 7th in the world in eighth-grade mathematics and 4th in science. Only Massachusetts, which has a comparable child poverty rate, did better.

“On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Vermont consistently ranks at the highest levels. We have the best graduation rate in the nation and are ranked second in child well-being.

“Just this week, a social media company that compares financial products (WalletHub) analyzed twelve different quality metrics and ranked Vermont’s school system third in the nation in terms school performance and outcomes.

“Nevertheless, if we fail to announce that each Vermont school is “low performing,” we jeopardize federal funding for elementary and secondary education. The “low performing” label brings with it a number of mandatory sanctions, which your principal is required to explain to you. This policy does not serve the interest of Vermont schools, nor does it advance our economic or social well-being. Further, it takes our focus away from other measures that give us more meaningful and useful data on school effectiveness.

“It is not realistic to expect every single tested child in every school to score as proficient. Some of our students are very capable, but may have unique learning needs that make it difficult for them to accurately demonstrate their strengths on a standardized test. Some of our children survived traumatic events that preclude good performance on the test when it is administered. Some of our students recently arrived from other countries, and have many valuable talents but may not yet have a good grasp of the academic English used on our assessments. And, some of our students are just kids who for whatever reason are not interested in demonstrating their best work on a standardized test on a given day.

“We know that statewide, our biggest challenge is finding better ways to engage and support the learning of children living in poverty. Our students from families with means and parents with more education, consistently are among the top performing in the country. However, federal NCLB policy has not helped our schools improve learning or narrow the gaps we see in our data between children living in poverty and children from more affluent families. We need a different approach that actually works.”

What are the alternatives? Most other states have received a waiver to get out from under the broken NCLB policy. They did this by agreeing to evaluate their teachers and principals based on the standardized test scores of their students. Vermont is one of only 5 states that do not have a waiver at this time. We chose not to agree to a waiver for a lot of reasons, including that the research we have read on evaluating teachers based on test scores suggests these methods are unreliable in classes with 15 or fewer students, and this represents about 40-50% of our classes. It would be unfair to our students to automatically fire their educators based on technically inadequate tools. Also, there is evidence suggesting that over-relying on test-based evaluation might fail to credit educators for doing things we actually want them to do, such as teach a rich curriculum across all important subject areas, and not just math and English language arts. In fact, nation-wide, we expect more and more states to give up these waivers for many of the reasons we chose not to pursue one in the first place.

Like other Vermont educators, I am deeply committed to continuously improving our schools and the professional skill of our teachers. I have heard from principals and teachers across the state who are deeply committed to developing better ways of teaching and working with parents and other organizations to ensure that every child’s basic needs are met. If basic needs are not met, children cannot take advantage of opportunities that we provide in school. However, the federal law narrows our vision of schools and what we should be about. Ironically, the only way a school could pass the NCLB criteria would be to leave some children behind – to exclude some of the students who come to our doors. That is something public schools in Vermont will not do.

Matching Our Measures to Our Purpose

Certainly, we know tests are an important part of our tool kit, but they do not capture everything that is important for our children to learn. With this in mind, our State Board of Education clearly outlined five additional education priorities in our new Education Quality Standards, including scientific inquiry, citizenship, physical health and wellness, artistic expression and 21st century transferable skills.

As parents and caregivers, we embrace a broader vision for our children than that defined in federal policy. Thus, we encourage you to look at your own child’s individual growth and learning, along with evidence your school has provided related to your child’s progress. Below are some questions to consider:

• What evidence does your school provide of your child’s growing proficiency?

• Is your child developing the skills and understanding she needs to thrive in school and
the community?

• Are graduates of your school system prepared to succeed in college and/or careers?

• Is your child happy to go to school and engaged in learning?

• Can your child explain what he is learning and why? Can your child give examples of
skills he has mastered?

• Is your child developing good work habits? Does she understand that practice leads to
better performance?

• Does your child feel his work in school is related to his college and career goals?

• Does your child have one adult at the school whom she trusts and who is committed to
her success?

• If you have concerns, have you reached out to your child’s teacher to share your
perspective?

Be engaged with your school, look at evidence of your own child’s learning, and work with your local educators to ensure that every child is challenged and supported, learning and thriving. Schools prosper when parents are involved as the first teachers of their children.

The State’s Obligation to Our Children

Working with the Governor, the State Board, the General Assembly and other agencies, and most importantly, with educators across the state, the Agency of Education will invite schools across the state to come together to innovate and improve our schools. We hope your school will volunteer to help develop and use a variety of other measures that will give parents, citizens and educators better information on student learning and what we can do to personalize and make it better. These measures include:

• collaborative school visits by teams of peers, to support research, professional learning and sharing of innovative ideas,

• personalization of learning through projects and performance assessments of proficiency,

• gathering and sharing of feedback from teachers, parents and students related to school climate and culture, student engagement and opportunities for self-directed learning,

• providing teachers and administrators standards-based feedback on the effectiveness of their instruction,

• developing personalized learning plans that involve students in defining how they will demonstrate they are ready to graduate, and basing graduation on these personalized assessments of proficiency rather than “seat-time”,

• analyzing growth and improvement at the Supervisory level as well as the school level, to identify systems that seem to be fostering greater growth in students, as a way of identifying and sharing promising practices across schools.

Vermont has a proud and distinguished educational history, but we know we can always do better. We are committed to supporting our schools as they find more effective and more engaging ways to improve the skills and knowledge of our children. As we have done before, we intend to draw on the tremendous professional capability of teachers across the state as we work to continuously improve our schools. Our strength has always been our ingenuity and persistence. In spite of federal policies that poorly fit the unique nature of Vermont, let’s continue to work together to build great schools that prepare our children to be productive citizens and contributors to our society

Categories Federal Waiver, Honor Roll, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Real Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Congratulations to Sherry Gay-Dagnono on Michigan Victory!

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2014 //
3

Sherry Gay-Dagnogo won the Democratic primary in Michigan’s 8th House District. The Network for Public Education endorsed her because of her strong stand against over-testing and privatization. She is a former middle school teacher. Gay-Dagnogo also supports Congressional Hearings on the cost and misuse of testing.

Sherry Gay-Dagnogo’s victory is a big win for students and public education in Michigan. Her victory sends a strong message to candidates nationwide that siding with the over-testing zealots isn’t just bad policy, it’s bad politics. Seat by seat, in legislatures, in the gubernatorial races, in Congress, we will fight to elect friends of public education, who defend children and sound education.

Never forget: no matter how much money the privatizers spend, we are many, and they are few. A victory for public education is a victory for democracy.

Congratulations, Sherry!

Categories Michigan, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Real Education, Testing

I Think I Love Lily Eskelsen

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2014 //
65

I read Jeff Bryant’s interview with the President-elect of NEA, Lily Eskelsen, and I think I love her.

She is smart, strong, and she doesn’t mince words.

She was a classroom teacher for many years, and she speaks from experience teaching many kinds of kids, including kids in special education and kids in a homeless shelter.

She knows that VAM is ridiculous.

She knows that tests can be valuable when used for diagnostic purposes, but harmful when used to pin a ranking on students, teachers, principals, and schools.

She gets it.

Here is a small part of the interview. Jeff asked why NEA delegates voted for a resolution calling on Duncan to resign.

“Bryant: So what’s the frustration for teachers?

“Eskelsen: Here’s the frustration – and I’m not blaming the delegates; I will own this; I share in their anger. The Department of Education has become an evidence-free zone when it comes to high stakes decisions being made on the basis of cut scores on standardized tests. We can go back and forth about interpretations of the department’s policies, like, for instance, the situation in Florida where teachers are being evaluated on the basis of test scores of students they don’t even teach. He, in fact, admitted that was totally stupid. But he needs to understand that Florida did that because they were encouraged in their applications for grant money and regulation waivers to do so. When his department requires that state departments of education have to make sure all their teachers are being judged by students’ standardized test scores, then the state departments just start making stuff up. And it’s stupid. It’s absurd. It’s non-defensible. And his department didn’t reject applications based on their absurd requirements for testing. It made the requirement that all teachers be evaluated on the basis of tests a threshold that every application had to cross over. That’s indefensible.

“Bryant: So any good the Obama administration has tried to accomplish for education has been offset by the bad?

“Eskelsen: Yes. Sure, we get pre-K dollars and Head Start, but it’s being used to teach little kids to bubble in tests so their teachers can be evaluated. And we get policies to promote affordable college, but no one graduating from high school gets an education that has supported critical and creative thinking that is essential to succeeding in college because their education has consisted of test-prep from Rupert Murdoch. The testing is corrupting what it means to teach. I don’t celebrate when test scores go up. I think of El Paso. Those test scores went up overnight. But they cheated kids out of their futures. Sure, you can “light a fire” and “find a way” for scores to go up, but it’s a way through the kids that narrows their curriculum and strips their education of things like art and recess.

“Bryant: Doesn’t Duncan understand that?

“Eskelsen: No. That reality hasn’t entered the culture of the Department of Education. They still don’t get that when you do a whole lot of things on the periphery, but you’re still judging success by a cut score on a standardized test and judging “effective” teachers on a standardized test, then you will corrupt anything good that you try to accomplish.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, English Language Learners, Real Education, Special Education, Supporting public schools, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Unions

What Counts Most in Education? Intellect or Interest? Facts or Soul?

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2014 //
56

In what most surely be the most famous statement by David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards, he said that “no one gives a s— what you think or feel.” In place of personal motivation, Coleman stresses cool intellectual analysis of text and problems in the Common Core. Fiction, which might dwell too much on emotion, takes a back seat to informational text.

But this is wrong, says blogger John Chase. Even in the world of business, employers find that their most valued workers are engaged in their work. They bring passion to doing it well. The best places to work have a “soul,” and they strive to keep their workers engaged and purposeful.

He writes:

“K-12 education programs that claim to prepare students for college and careers should be focused more on cultivating a wide array of social and emotional competencies that are transferable workforce skills rather than continually testing a narrow set of measurable Math and ELA skills.

“Learning should be a self-directed journey of discovery. Students should be “free to learn” as they explore their interests and pursue their passions rather than simply following a map and predetermined path to each Common Core learning standard….

“Learning should be passion-driven rather than data-driven and focus on the needs of students rather than the needs of the tests. Classroom activities should provide numerous opportunities for students to connect with their dreams, feelings, interests, and other people rather than demand students read closely and stay connected to text.”

My comment:

We are driven to learn by interest and passion and purpose, not by the soulless collection of test scores, credits, and points. We learn best when we want to learn, not because we are ordered to learn. That which we do by mandate is soon forgotten. That which we seek and find becomes ours forever.

Categories Common Core, Real Education

John Merrow’s Poetic Critique of Bubble Testing, H/T Robert Frost

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2014 //
10

John Merrow demonstrates the incisiveness of poetry as a means of communicating complex ideas in his rewrite of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall.” Merrow turns the poem into “Mending School,” a scathing critique of bubble testing. Used appropriately and sparingly, he suggests, the bubble tests may offer value. Used promiscuously, as they are today, they are a parasite that is consuming the host. They have become not a measure of education, but a substitute for education, an insidious force that strips education of meaning. Merrow’s annotations are important. In one, he writes, “Robert Frost’s poems, including ‘Mending Wall,’ may not be on many school reading lists in the future because the Common Core State Standards emphasize non-fiction” another annotation refers to the growth of the opt out movement. And one exposes the uselessness of the current regime: “School districts generally get back the test results about four months after they are given, long after students have moved on to new grades, new teachers, and perhaps new schools.” One wonders how useful the test results would be even if they were reported in a timely manner. One wonders about the long-term effect of judging students by the format of a multiple-choice test. How many decisions in life consist of four defined, discrete choices? How many are “none of the above” or “well,, two of the four might be right”?

Categories Accountability, Real Education, Standardized Testing

Jonathan Lovell: The Magic of Learning to Listen

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2014 //
35

Jonathan Lovell has been leading writing workshops for many years.

In this delightful post, he describes his struggle to finish his own dissertation, and the flights of fancy that kept blocking his path.

He uses graphics creatively to reflect his state of mind. You watch his thinking evolve.

Watch a writer at work and lament with him that the Obama administration eliminated the minimal funding needed to keep more than 200 sites of the National Writing Project alive, summer institutes where teachers experience the love of learning without the threat of test scores and VAM. No utilitarian purpose, just freedom to think and create.

Categories Real Education, Teachers and Teaching

Laurel Sturt: Who Are the Biggest Bullies in Education?

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2014 //
34

Laurel Sturt says that old-fashioned schoolyard bullying has evolved into Internet malice, protected by anonymity. She says bullying has become a national pastime for some political leaders. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has cultivated a reputation as a bully, jabbing his finger at lesser mortals.

And then bullying is built into education policy–federal, state, and local.

She writes:

“Though the psychopathic rush of inflicting pain on another human being is not one most of us would appreciate, we have only to look at the realm of education to see an acceleration of bullying, in multiple guises. Take, for example, the oppressive federal mandates sent down from on high, No Child Left Behind, and its successor, Race to the Top. Here we have, for all intents and purposes, sadistic edicts impossible to fulfill, the charge of NCLB, “proficiency” for all children by 2014, nothing short of an iron mask for teachers and kids alike; states were bullied to participate to get millions in federal school funding. One would think subjecting kids to the torture of test prep and testing while losing a decade of authentic education, tilting futilely at an arbitrary data windmill, would have been consigned to the mistakes file. Yet, showing that arm twisting through policy is an equal opportunity, bipartisan affront, through his Bully of Education Arne Duncan, the very premise of Obama’s RTTT has relied on the legalized notion of bullying, bribery and extortion: sign on to our agenda or you’ll starve for funds.

“Within the Race to the Top straitjacket, then, the bullying theme has continued with the individual mandates: bullying standards developed undemocratically by not educators but profit-motivated bullies; bullied instruction forced on teachers by these standards; and parents bullied to share their children’s private data, their rights to privacy stripped by education business lobbyist cum bullies. Then there’s the bullying of teachers through evaluations unfairly tied to the test scores of the bullied kids, victimized students who, subjected to impossible work and tests, are displaying symptoms of bullying–depression, anxiety, insomnia, nausea, hopelessness, with the added bonus of a PTSD scar for life.

“Move down to the next level of power, and state and local bullying is flourishing. Here in New York we have a governor and education officials stonily unmoved by the pain they’ve signed us onto with RTTT, with no movement in sight to end it, notwithstanding a coming fall election; their intransigent coercion in the face of hardship is bullying. New York City teachers and students recently endured a decade of bullying micromanagement under the dictator Michael Bloomberg, a mayor in control of the schools, a nationwide experiment which has yielded low achievement results but a much higher degree of yes, bullying.”

Bullying moves into the classroom, where teachers are compelled to violate their professional ethics by authoritarian principals.

The bullying will continue until teachers stand united and resist. Those who bully them, steal their reputations and their profession can and must be stopped. Resistance is the best defense against the bullies. Don’t stand alone. Stand together.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Duncan, Arne, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Principals, Race to the Top, Real Education

What Would Happen if You Let Joy Enter the Classroom?

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2014 //
30

From Bellevue, Nebraska, watch a video of classes where joy, caring, and compassion have crowded out rigor and grit.

Nothing said about being a global competitor.

Nothing about college and career readiness.

Just the joy of learning and sharing and caring.

Categories Real Education

Arthur Camins: What if We Used Assessment to Learn Rather than to Judge?

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2014 //
115

Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., is an insightful critic of contemporary “reforms.” In this post, he envisions a different way to use assessments.

“Frequent high-stakes testing and its misuse for teacher evaluation are poisoning the assessment waters. Assessment should not be the goal of learning. The word “assessment” should not make students, teachers, administrators and parents cringe. It does not have to be this way. For students and their teachers the most effective use of assessment is to guide next steps for learning.

“What if we shifted the balance of our assessment attention from the summative to the formative—assessment that can be used every day to support learning?

“What if we could more precisely identify where each student was along the pathway to learning?

“What if we could be more accurate at sorting out the nuances in his or her gaps in understanding?”

His central point: Don’t judge, inform.

He concludes:

“Less focus on summative assessment of learning and more focus on daily, embedded formative assessment will help us reclaim the central role of teachers and the art of teaching that I think has been de-emphasized by the focus on summative testing, Adequate Yearly Progress and value-added metrics for teacher evaluation. Research that compares the relative effects on posttest student performance from grades, grades with comments, and comments alone suggests that summative judgments, even when accompanied by comments intended to help, are far less effective than helpful guiding comments alone in motivating students and increasing their learning (Butler, 1987). It may be that summative and formative assessments have that same relationship on effective teaching. A focus on formative assessment and its key component—feedback to students—will shift our perspective on diagnostic data from a source of judgment to a source of information for improvement.

“Of course, not every educational goal is easily measured. Subject matter knowledge and skills are certainly important, but so are imagination, creativity, flexibility, respect and social responsibility. I am not arguing for turning classrooms into a diagnostic laboratory. Classrooms should be places of joy, friendship and discovery. However, I do believe that we can learn to be more productively tuned into the nuances of students learning. We can learn to more effectively provide feedback to students so that they can move their own learning forward.

“I have tried to articulate what I consider challenging aspirational goals. Achieving all of them will be a long-term effort, demanding shared learning and responsibility among teachers, principals, school systems, curriculum developers, psychometricians, and policy makers at all levels. Most importantly, it will require time for teachers to collaborate to share ideas and practice. However, I believe that this balanced view, with an emphasis on classroom assessment, gives us direction and points us toward small steps we all can begin to take on the journey.”

Categories Real Education, Testing

Patrick Walsh on the Death of Philosophy in a World of Philistines

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
22

Many bloggers have commented on the pretentiousness and vacuousness of the gaggle of politicians, entrepreneurs, and hedge funders who have gathered in the Adirondacks of New York and audaciously dubbed themselves the “thought leaders” of our time. They called their meeting “Camp Philos,” to claim association with such intellectual giants as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their goal, they said, was to discuss “education reform,” but it is now generally understood that this term refers to the privatization and monetization of public education. They no doubt spoke of getting the nation’s children workforce-ready, prepared for global competition, primed to ace the next round of standardized tests.

What would Ralph Waldo Emerson say? Would he write about the convergence of crass values, of minds trained for profit making, of souls so devoid of ideals that they confuse commerce with philosophy?

Of everything I have read, whether humorous or serious yet, the best is the musings of a teacher named Patrick Walsh who writes the RagingHorse blog. I can give you but a sample of his critique of this circus of self-celebration and vulgar commercialism.

He writes:

“Needless to say, anyone who can convince themselves that they could place the words “Philosopher’s Camp “ before the words, “education reform” in the same breath they are comparing themselves with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson is well nigh in need of a good teacher, a course in philosophy 101, or at the very least, a dictionary.

“On the other hand the event – which achieves a kind of horrible sublimity in its sheer vulgarity — is perfectly consistent with the tactics of the long stealth campaign to privatize the school system that built America. Of the privatizers many repugnant tactics, none is more more consistent, intrinsic nor effective than the conscious manipulation of language and images. In the way does a half assed experiment, hatched up in secret by shills and testing companies and financed by a billionaire come to be known as the miraculous Common Core State Standards, the are the answer to all that ills us, the solution to all problems. In this way does the almost Biblical struggle for Civil Rights come to be employed by the privatizer’s public relations department, as a tool to strip teachers of the right to due process and undermine unions. In this way does the word “philosophy”, one of the most transcendent and spiritually charged words in any language, come to be used in Lake Placid, as a fig leaf for yet the latest episode in most rapacious campaign against a public system in American history. The privatizers know little or nothing of education but they do know, as Orwell knew ( see “Politics and the English Language” ) that those who control the language control reality.

“Cuomo, coming off orchestrating what is surely the most egregiously unfair education law in the history of New York state, is the “honorary chairman” of the philosophical retreat. It troubles the philosophical Chairman Governor not at all that no educator was invited to Camp Philos, nor even that those who attempted to attend were summarily rejected, one and all.

“Still, even as I find the privatizers among the most cynical, ignorant and narcissistic people on the face of the earth, I must admit there is one place in which I agree with them, even as I radically disagree with their methods and ends.”

Walsh agrees that American education has failed in its duty to teach generations of students to appreciate the meaning of philosophy.

He writes:

“I would define the failure as philosophical in both nature and cause. Allow me to elaborate. Education is, in its essence, a philosophical endeavor. Yes, of course we need to insure that our citizens acquire enough practical skills so that they can navigate the always unknown road ahead. Yes, of course, it means that schools must do all they can to insure our students have the requisite skills to gain employment in an ever more frighteningly competitive world in which jobs are now routinely “out-sourced” or mechanized out of existence altogether. That said, education is not job training. Job training is a wonderful thing and a necessity but education serves a much larger, deeper, and more vital role, and that is where the philosophical element, directly or indirectly, enters into the picture.

“Accordingly, in the front and center of our education system should be some variations of the following questions:

“What, as a society, do we value ?

What kind of a people are we ?

What do we really believe in ?

Do we live our beliefs ?

What kind of citizens do we wish to produce ?

What does it mean to be educated ?

What, if anything, are our responsibilities to each other ?

How are we to live together ?

“Were it within my power to do so, I would immediately and unapologetically do all I could do to introduce the study of philosophy on some level beginning in the third grade, the age of my daughter as of this writing. And I would make it an essential part of the curriculum in every grade until high school graduation. Implicit with this undertaking would be the understanding that some may not grasp the meaning of the study for years if at all but all would benefit from the exposure.

“Children would begin with a study of the word: “philo,” which means “love. “Sophia,” which means “wisdom.” Let them spend a week, a month, a year — whatever it takes – discussing and attempting to grasp those two words alone and the concept of those together, and you cannot help but have a child with an imagination larger because it is more unleashed than before. Help a child understand that this thing called “wisdom” exists and is real and has been honored and revered by the civilized since the beginning of civilization, that it has nothing to do with the accumulation of material wealth, nothing to do with power over others, nothing to do with competition or control, and you have opened the portals of the mind. And you have done something else: you have given a child a way of seeing that affords he or she some mode of mental protection against a corporate assault that, for many, begins at the moment of consciousness. Worse, the assault is designed to wed that struggling to be formed identity with a product, now and forevermore.”

He writes:

“The study of philosophy would not merely make our children “college and career ready” ( whatever those weasel words actually mean), it would help them to understand this mystery called Life in all of its paradoxical, tragic and wondrous nature.

“We now live in a nation where most citizens seem to believe that the word “philosophy” is synonymous with “opinion.” We have all heard vulgar examples in statements such as “My philosophy is to hit a guy before he hits you” or some such foolishness. It is, I would argue, the absence of philosophical knowledge that has contributed to much of America’s horrible and dangerous confusion of technology with science, data with knowledge and knowledge with wisdom. Most of all has led to the groutesques idea that knowedge is power rather than liberation from the need for power.

“This is worse than sad.. No decent society, never mind democracy, can exist in this kind of mass confusion.
And, yes, many of these same people are products of the public school system and yes, that school system failed them. And it continues to fail them.

“When I have asked my students why they go to school and why they study, overwhelmingly they reply with some variation of “ to do well on the test.” This is sick but it is hardly an accident. But why should they think differently? It is, however, a crime. It is the crime of starving the imaginations of millions of children by sheer neglect. And it is a crime that the miraculous Common Core will not only not correct but will, in fact, perpetuate.

“I do not believe in magical thinking. (I leave that for the proponents of the Common Core) I am well aware that the study of philosophy will not automatically and magically open the doors of the imagination. Pre-Nazi Germany had the most rigorous school curriculum but it did little to stop millions from embracing Hitler. Something more is needed. That said, I know this: the absence of something as immense as philosophy can only diminish this nation. As I see it, the problem is ecological. By this I mean if you deprive a child of philosophical awareness you do not get child minus philosophy. You get someone radically different and radically weaker. You get a person whose imagination, the key to all, has been severely diminished.

“The purpose of education is not to be found in the vulgar slogan, “knowledge is power” but the absence of philosophy is one reason why that slogan is so readily swallowed in our increasingly competitive, miserable, punitive land. As philosophers and artists and spiritual geniuses have known for thousands of years, education is the emacipation of the human imagination. The purpose of education is freedom.”

I will not lift all the words of this brilliant blog. I want you to open the link and read it all yourself. These are not the words of a college professor or an eminent theologian, but a classroom teacher in one of the toughest neighborhoods of New York City.

Patrick Walsh is a teacher. He can pass the tests the politicians mandate. Can we say the same of the politicians whose forte is self-promotion?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, Privatization, Real Education
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