While reading Julia Steiny’s October 18th, 2012
article titled, Dreary Education Goals
Yield Dreary Results, (http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/julia-steiny-dreary-american-education-goals-yield-dreary-results) I found myself frequently wanting
to yell at the computer. “Of course we should look at Finland!” (Which is what Steiny
is trying to say.) “Why wouldn’t
we look at countries more successful in educating their children and try to
emulate them?”
Steiny compares at the education goals set forth by a
collaboration of Australian states to those set forth by the United States of
America. Australia’s goals are
student-centered in the truest form of the term. They take the student
as a whole person into account.
For instance, Goals #2 is that, “All young Australians become: successful learners; confident
and creative individuals; active
and informed citizens.” The United
States performance goals are full of words like, “progress”, “outcomes”, and
“improve(d) instruction”. Not once
does an outcome mention creativity, citizenship or confidence – all indicators
that the education of the whole child has taken place.
Yet, Australia, even with all
its hippy-dippy creativity-loving and successful learning, continues to out-rank the USA in
every study I could find. Could it be that those in charge of education in Australia are on to something? Could be! So
why are the leaders of education in the US not doing anything
about it? They seem to feel that, rather than teaching children and then finding a assessment framework that authentically measures their learning, teaching the test is the answer. And I
understand that there is an inherent hypocrisy in my making the argument that
Australia may have a better education system than ours when the metric used to
rank the students in both countries is a standardized test. I am not against standardized tests. Only against the assumption that a
score on a standardized test is the best way to determine whether a child or a
group of children is absorbing the information deemed important.
I
was horrified to finally grasp that what a friend teaches in the first grade at
Broad Street is ELA and math. No
science. No history. And that she is not free to deviate
from the script written in her book when the students aren’t engaged. This is because it has been determined
that the best way to increase test scores is to teach the information on the
test and nothing but. I have to
admit to not having yet researched the national curriculum of Australia and
whether or not there are schools like Broad Street in operation there and I
would tend to say that there probably are. However, the focus on educating the whole child obviously makes
a difference! And obvious also is
that there is more going on in Australian classrooms that basic ELA and math
skills acquisition. You don’t
teach children creativity by reading a script out of a book.
Steiny comments, “We’re not supporting the innate curiosity, creativity
and love of learning that will produce the innovators our economists and
parents say we need.” This continues to boggle my mind. We know what we need. Passion, creativity, innovation, depth
and breadth of knowledge. Yet, at
more and more schools in our country, studies that are core to the development
of these traits – science, history, civics, art and more– are being
marginalized or straight-out cut.
It’s appalling and demoralizing.
How can we hope to get ahead as a society if we ignore what we all know
to be true and focus on the data children produce rather than the children
themselves?
Note: I hope that the language in this piece
does not in any way imply that I think that my friend is less of a teacher because she
does not teach in a classroom that I believe meets the needs of a developing
child. She is a caring human
being and a passionate advocate for her students who does all she can to meet
their needs within the confines that she has been handed. I could not do what she does.
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