Disagreeing to Agree

During today’s discussion of Jack Hassard’s article portraying overseers of Common Standards as authoritarian opponents to individuality, I was forced to reevaluate my initial impressions on the piece.  I do agree with the author that national test scores are an arbitrary method for measuring a country’s stability and economic growth, and the neglect of input from actual educators is quite alarming.  Not to mention the overall blow to the teaching profession’s morale and productivity over the last few years.  It is a shame that so many bright scholars have to continue to focus their energies on explaining the difference between test taking and genuine learning. Hassard comments on how teachers have been made out as enemies that need to be sought out and eliminated.  I’ve always struggled with this idea of just getting rid of bad teachers.  After all, if we do identify bad teachers, shouldn’t we be able to teach them to improve?  Isn’t the basis of the practice and profession of education that people who are ignorant or deficient in some area can be taught to be better?

But while I agree with the rationale and the sentiment behind the paper, I still struggle with the narrative presented in the paper.  We discussed the dichotomy in class, but what I still have a problem with is the presentation of public schools as functioning perfectly if not for the shadow of Common Standards looming over them and ruining everything.  Hasard quotes award-winning teacher Karen Borders who said that her students “are not passive learners, they are scientists” and they “embrace the idea that they are empowered to own their learning.” This feels to me like an exaggerated and unrealistic view of what students, even succeeding students, get out of school.  To me this kind of overstatement is just as dangerous as the leaps of logic in A Nation at Risk.

This part is going to be hard for me to articulate without sounding like a huge cynic or a bad teacher, but I’m still going to try.  Don’t get me wrong, I got into the profession to inspire; to make kids appreciate books and writing, to become more confident in presenting their own ideas.  In Altoona I had lots of students express gratitude for helping them, or smile when they did well.  But if I think back to my own priorities when I was in high school, they primarily revolved around continuing whatever video game I was playing when I got home or trying to get girls to talk to me. From what I’ve seen, things haven’t changed all that much in nine years.

Now I’m not trying to say that students can't like school, just that it is unlikely to instigate the same amount of enthusiasm as the professionals that are teaching; the professionals chose to be there.  Whether students are presented with the common standards or the most progressive differentiated real-world curriculum possible, they are still forced to be there. And while great teachers (of which I hope to be one eventually) can engage, challenge, and push students to reach their potential, those students still will groan every time you pass out homework or hand out a test.  Teachers are hardworking and passionate people, but most students I've met want to find their own passions, not have their teachers' passions projected onto them.  This is another reason why basing public school success on standardized tests is a farce, because students have an abundance of interests and priorities; it shouldn’t be their responsibility to ensure teachers’ jobs or validate a school’s existence.  My issue with remarks throughout the piece, such as Borders' remarks, are not that her students enjoy learning or that she pushes them towards deeper forms of thinking.  It's just that the comment make it sound like her agenda is being projected onto the students. 

The Standards Movement is all about expectations on both sides.  Everyone is hung up on how to determine if teachers and schools are “working” when what we really need to do is take a break from that debate and focus how to get students more interested in learning.  Highlighting the problems in Common Standards is fine, but even if all national standards were thrown out tomorrow, that still wouldn’t solve the problem of  low motivation or declining interest in reading nationwide.  I still find it difficult to believe that in this huge debate, the student voice is nonexistent.  

Bonus: here's a video about some of the topics that were brought up in class today outside of the realm of education.