Op. Ed. on NCLB Curriculum Narrowing

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

 CHILDREN BEING CHEATED OUT OF FULLER EDUCATION
   Hartford Courant Opinion Column -- March 30, 2006
               by Robert M. Thorson

The federal No Child Left Behind Act is dehumanizing our children. Based 
on a study just released by the nonpartisan Center on Educational 
Policy, 71 percent of our nation's 15,000 school districts have narrowed 
their curriculums to emphasize reading and math. In the process, the 
higher-level subjects that make us truly human - namely art, music, 
literature, history, natural science and outdoor recess - have been 
de-emphasized.

This conclusion prompted me to reflect on the song "Wonderful World" by 
Sam Cooke that I sang to myself in high school:

Don't know much about history,

Don't know much biology.

Don't know much about a science book,

don't know much about the French I took.

But I do know that I love you,

and I know that if you love me, too,

what a wonderful world this would be.

At the deepest level, few would argue that "All We Need is Love," as the 
Beatles used to sing so cacophonously.

But in the NCLB environment, the song would be written something like this:

Don't know much about (any subject but reading and math),

but I do know that these subjects won't be tested.

So I know that they need not be taught as much,

what a wonderful back-to-basics world this will be.

Holding individual schools accountable for learning is an excellent 
idea, especially when it involves students with the most to learn, those 
with low proficiency in basic skills. It follows that if schools are to 
be held accountable, parents and federal overseers need objective 
numerical measures of school performance.

This means standardized "sit-still" pencil and paper tests that 
emphasize the most fundamental skills (because they are important from 
sea to shining sea), which means reading and math. Numerical test 
results are much less meaningful for more subjective content areas, 
especially those influenced by the poly-glot of American subcultures.

I agree that reading and math should be emphasized in schools as the two 
most fundamental subjects, regardless of testing mandates. Indeed, 
humans seem to have a hard-wired neurological module for encoding and 
decoding language, by which I mean writing and reading. We also have an 
inborn capacity for logic and symbolism that is cleverly abstracted by 
mathematics. Each of these basic skills resides in a separate hemisphere 
of our brains, left and right, respectively.

Literature lies one step above reading on the scale of mental 
abstraction. Science lies one step above math. Above literature and 
science are even more highly derived subjects, such as art history and 
cognitive anthropology.

In a free-market system of private schools, it is the parents who decide 
where to send their kids, based on a subjective assessment of the whole 
curriculum. That this concept works well is proved by the history and 
modern vigor of private secondary schools and colleges in the United 
States. There is no significant reason similar market incentives cannot 
and should not be built into public schools choice as well.

In the big-government NCLB system, however, federal officials decide 
which schools are deemed failures, based on an objective assessment of 
math and reading skills.

It follows that any school wishing to stay in good graces with the 
federal government's heavy hand will, quite understandably, de-emphasize 
parts of the curriculum that have little to do with their survival and 
emphasize those that do. This is exactly what has happened to a large 
majority of the nation's 15,000 school districts.

Because of NCLB, the amount of time students spend at their desks doing 
reading and math has increased relative to the proportion of time they 
spend in art studios, music rooms, gymnasiums, science laboratories, 
greenhouses and industrial arts shops, and outdoors on field trips. For 
many students, the school day is increasingly about drilling basic 
skills. This is not the way to engage student learning.

Robert M. Thorson is a professor of geology at the University of 
Connecticut and a member of The Courant's Place board of contributors. 
His column appears every Thursday. He can be reached at 
profthorson@hotmail.com.

   
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-thorson0330.artmar30,0,7663428.column?coll=hc-headlines-oped