[MD] Politics

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Khaled]
Back to our citizens. When you are oblivious to where you are 
physically, I mean not being able to point to a world  map and say I 
am here, it's only downhill from there.

[Arlo]
The bulk of our approach to education in this country is Fordist in a 
post-Fordian world. Traditionalists argue that "because my daddy was 
taught that way, my kids should be taught that way". Progressives 
make the mistake of throwing every passing fad into the mix they can. 
And teachers are overwhelmed, numb and caught between kids, parents 
and bureaucrats. We teach for tests because that is all "No Child" 
is, and that is what districts have to do. Gone are critical 
thinking, higher level cognitive skills like synthesis, analysis and 
evaluation (e.g. using Bloom's Taxonomy). The curriculum has largely 
become piecemeal, with disconnected subjects with little perceived 
relevance being jumped into and out of every fifty minutes. The 
overwhelming majority of parents are only involved in their 
children's schooling to complain about something, be it "evolution", 
"an unfair grade", or when something goes wrong. We expect teachers 
to deal with all sorts of problem behavior, but then cripple their 
ability to do so.

When I lived in Chicago years ago, I overheard a college student in 
the library of UC actually asking the reference desk for an atlas 
"because she needed to find out where Israel was for her history 
class". On one hand, I ask, how the hell does someone make it to the 
college level without a basic understanding of where these countries 
are. On the other, I know, that the impetus in American culture is 
purely America-centric, we don't give a damn about the rest of the 
world, and so why on earth should it matter. Back home, my mother 
works with a mother who actually went to the school to demand her 
daughter NOT have to learn a second language, telling my mom "if 
English is good enough for me, it's good enough for the rest of the 
world" (actual quote!).

Over the past decade, when I have been involved in instructional 
design work and curricular issues, I have seen a slow trend (but not 
without opposition) towards the type of constructivist learning 
environments that challenge the Fordist "all students in neat little 
rows, sitting quietly as the teacher fills their little mush-brains 
with knowledge". I have seen schools struggle to adopt integrated 
curriculae, to open up the typical "periods" to allow students who 
are engaged in history or biology to continue to be so despite what 
the little clock on the wall tells them they should suddenly be 
thinking about, to approach larger questions critically and to find 
meaning in what has typically been presented as acontextual, 
irrelevant chunks of "facts" that are doled out like peas in a 
daycare. And in many areas I see daily improvement and growth. But 
what has to always be remembered is that "education" is a reflection 
of the values of the culture. And I am not just talking about which 
"facts" are valued. When parents become more involved, when learning 
becomes more important than "passing a test", when we stop demanding 
an arbitrary, externally imposed "progression" to learning, when the 
home and the community value this, then the schools will ipso facto 
be like this as well.

Now you got me on a rant. Sorry.