Nov 01 2007
Data Driven Destruction
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By Paul A. Moore
11/1/07
One of the corporate wrecking balls brought down recently on America’s public schools is “data driven” education. The charade is a creation of the Business Roundtable and other forces that dream of a privatized school system that serves only their global profit making schemes.
Because their sinister intentions must be kept on the down low, data driven education is packaged and sold as economical but revolutionary pedagogy come to the classroom. Absurdity is the inevitable result. And so it is that our system of universal public education is now trapped in a scene from Woody Allen’s farce Bananas. The new leader has decreed that, “From this day on the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16-years-old are now…16-years-old!”
Promoting insanity in the classroom has proven to be quite an effective weapon of public school destruction. Teachers are being broken down and driven away at an unprecedented rate. One in five new teachers will not make it through their first year. Half of them will be gone inside of five years.
In still sane sectors of our society data is collected on a rational basis. The U.S. Census Bureau gathers data on population, infant mortality, life expectancy, health insurance and the distribution of wealth for the sake of a more effective government. In a sector of our society targeted for demoralization and destruction, data is collected for data’s sake. There is no earthly reason for most of the information teachers are now being ordered to collect and analyze through incessant testing of students. If the Census Bureau was put on the same footing they would be checking people’s underwear every half hour.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is a high ranking leader of the corporate assault on public schools, right up there with Michael R. Bloomberg, Eli Broad, and the Walton (Wal-Mart) Family. Jeb Bush is not just a friend of big business; he is a big business! One of his wholly-owned subsidiaries is his brother Neil Bush and Ignite! Learning. Ignite is a software company that “helps” students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) with “portable learning centers” at $3,000 per kid. The business has contracts in 13 Florida school districts and rakes in millions.
During Jeb Bush’s final year in office there is strong evidence to suggest that FCAT scores were manipulated and artificially inflated. The “education governor” was apparently going to barnstorm with the “education mayor” Mr. Bloomberg as a prelude to a run for the White House. Big brother has poisoned that well for the time being but in those days there was speculation over another possible career path for Jeb.
Imagine if Jeb Bush had been tapped by National Football League owners rather than Roger Goodell as the league’s commissioner. The new commissioner could have applied his education philosophy to the NFL. Certainly the players would be more effective if they spent less time on the practice field and in the weight room and more time being tested daily in the 40-yard dash, shuttle run, vertical leap and bench press. Less time practicing football plays and more time being tested on the playbook. Or imagine the new policy if President Bush had named his brother to the Cabinet? As U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Jeb Bush would surely have ordered the nation’s livestock weighed every few hours because even if it did cut into their feeding time it would certainly result in fatter cows.
Paul A. Moore is a teacher at Miami Carol City Senior High School
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“Assessment” is the latest buzz in schools today. There is this desire to continuously measure every detail about students’ learning. The assumption is that if they don’t get it right away then the teacher did something wrong and must redesign the course.
Testing is not inherently a bad thing. Testing provides a measurement of achievement and knowledge acquired. However, as you point out, when testing becomes the end product of the process you have fallen under the sway of a faulty paradigm.
The point is that what has been lost in the educational process is “education”. That is that the goal and product of an education system is educated students able to apply the knowledge they have acquired and NOT students who can pass a test. The goal is that of the proverbial “Seven Liberal Arts” regime - an educated individual able to reason and comprehend with some facility the world around them. That is exactly what the Plutocracy does not want. As was seen in the ’60’s students well educated have a tendency to think for themselves and rebel against being used as cannon fodder and tools for another’s twisted desires. Now, a well educated student may well pass that test with flying colors and it does represent a means of measuring attainment, but it is just that a measurement of attainment and not an end in and of itself. Test scores report what has been achieved, and rightly done is a necessary tool to judge how well the student has learned and to what extent. It quantifies a qualitative result. Of course standardized tests for all students at all levels can also be a means of applying a straitjacket to the students education by limiting the scope. Thus the very bright are held back, and the slower student is thrown away.
Certainly there are areas which are common and are fundamental basics which should be learned, notice I said learned not taught, by all students. Those that come to mind are Reading, Language, History, Mathematics (at least through Plane Geometry), Basic Science an Logic, Art , and Music. One could elaborate upon this but that is the basic regimen. Testing to ensure students have acquired fundamental knowledge is fine, but standardized testing beyond that is nothing more than a control mechanism to ensure that students are limited to the approved curriculum.
I fear that the problems with the American Public Schools, more correctly “Government Schools”, began long before the current mess. One can find the genesis of this destruction of learning with Dewey, Barnhardt and their Plutocratic Masters (Carnegie et. al., …). Their model, based on Pavlovian and Skinnerian Behaviorism, views children not as intelligent self aware entities to be educated and empowered but as mere animals to be trained to roll over, set, and beg when the master orders. The end product desired is that which serves the master’s needs with a minimum of rebellion. Ignorant people do not see the cage bars, which are beyond their view, where better educated, more aware, individuals do. What we have at this time is simply the logical progression and end result of a system which has been intentionally sabotaged to create a specific product: Semi-literate “Worker Bees” for the Hive that is being created.
Thus, for those aware, the decision has been to opt out and either Home School or Private School their children. Of course this is what the elitists have been doing all along. They do not put their children into the sewers of the Government School. No, no, no, they are at elite academies, Andover comes to mind, where their children receive an education grounded firmly in the aforementioned “Seven Liberal Arts” of Martianus Capella. This is not to take pot shots at well intentioned teachers who have naught in their heart but the desire to teach and to teach well. They, alas, are as much victims of the current regime as their poor suffering, too frequently drugged into submission, students. Teachers themselves have been steeped in the false paradigm, faulty instructional methods, etc., and can no longer touch or feel the traditions of knowledge based education. Therein lies part of the problem – the focus has become one of teaching rather than learning. A student, rightly understood, is one who learns. The teacher is their only to keep the student on the path, but sadly egos also get in the way and some do not seem satisfied unless they in turn can put their stamp on the students forehead.
At this point in time my vote on the public skool systum is one of “NO CONFIDENCE” and would advise a caring parent to seek by any means possible an alternative. I might note that Home Schooled kids have been routinely out performing the Government School students.
Erratum:
The sentence: “Those that come to mind are Reading, Language, History, Mathematics (at least through Plane Geometry), Basic Science an Logic, Art , and Music.”
Should read: “Those that come to mind are Reading, Language, History, Mathematics (at least through Plane Geometry), Basic Science and Logic, Art and Music.”
I’m tempted to expound further upon the point but will forego the impulse.
This is a Jew censorship list. The real Tom Paine would throw up if he saw the Jew control by Miller here.
www.Jew-Crime.com
www.PatriotMilitia.com
What education ? not in Amerika , more like people molding and getting ready for a one world order , who said that first ( Hitler) 2nd was George H. Bush !! is amerika dead or what !
I am retired after 27 years of teaching school in North Carolina. In the beginning, it was most enjoyable. Then about 1990, the four-period day movement came to our secondary schools. This was the beginning of the end. By 1997 it had spread to the middle school as well. 90 minutes is too long for adolescents to sit in one class.
Then came No Child Left Behind and the testing frenzy began. I truly felt sorry for my young students. Most of all, I felt sorry for the school system, which has been forced over the years to endure all sorts of tampering with curriculum, social experimentation, pop psychology, and educational quackery inflicted usually by non-professional lawmakers at the state and federal levels. The poor teachers have made do for years with substandard facilities and lack of equipment, compensating with love of subject matter and intense preparation. All of this has been rendered academic by the TEST. “I am not teaching the test, I am teaching smart,” I was told by a colleague. Much of the joy of learning and the joy of teaching has been eliminated by the rigors of teaching the material dictated by the TEST which is imposed by politicos who have little knowledge of or concern for education. Our children are not the same as some item of business, which with a little prompting, will yield a slightly higher profit each year. And yet, it is how they are treated.