Forwarded article: TESTING . . . TESTING . . . 1-2-3: CULTURAL EDUCATION MISSING FROM BUSH'S NEW PLAN

["George N. Schmidt" <Csubstance@AOL.COM>]

The following article was selected from the Internet Edition
of the Chicago Tribune. To visit the site, point your browser
to http://chicagotribune.com/.
----------- Chicago Tribune Article Forwarding----------------


Article forwarded by: George N. Schmidt

Return e-mail: Csubstance@aol.com

Article URL:  http://chicagotribune.com/leisure/tempo/printedition/article/0,2669,SAV-0102010213,FF.html

Comments:
The Chicago Tribune is
moving in some
interesting ways. The
column below appears in
today's "Tempo" sect

---Forwarded article----------------
TESTING . . . TESTING . . . 1-2-3: CULTURAL EDUCATION MISSING FROM BUSH'S NEW PLAN

Julia Keller

  Earlier this week, ABC aired the 1997 movie "Liar Liar," in which
Jim Carrey plays a lawyer afflicted with a peculiar malady: For one
day, he can speak only the truth. Naturally, this creates havoc in his
personal and professional life.

Approximately halfway through the inexplicably enjoyable film (my
entertainment standards plummet in the winter, when options shrink and
even dramas enacted by friends wielding sock puppets can enthrall), it
struck me:

    The premise of "Liar Liar" is exactly what's wrong with President
Bush's new education plan.

Now, you angry writers of outraged Letters to the Editor can relax.
I'm not calling Bush a liar.

The connection between the film and the proposed federal policy is
just this: In "Liar Liar," we discover that truth is a continuum, that
truth and lies are not polar opposites. What makes life work are
shades of gray and areas of ambiguity.

Bush's plan for public education has many components, but to me the
most troublesome one is the edict for federally mandated tests for, as
the president proclaimed, "every student, every year." School funding
will be tied to the results, thus forcing teachers to devote an
extraordinary amount of time to preparing students for these annual
tests. What may be lost along the way are the concepts that can't be
recapitulated on standardized tests, no matter how carefully
composed.

I am talking about, for want of a better term, cultural education.

I hesitate over the phrase only because it has a hoity-toity ring.
"Cultural education" sounds like a cotillion or poetry recitation.
With public school students falling behind in basic subjects such as
math and science, a focus on cultural education can seem like dessert
before dinner.

Yet what I mean are critical thinking skills. I mean the putting of
ideas and historical movements in cultural context. What school must
teach us, along with facts and figures, is how to think, how to
organize ideas. An important way of doing this is through reading
great literature or listening to great music, discussing it and
writing about it -- not through spending inordinate amounts of time
preparing for an all-important test at year's end.

There's no question public education is in need of an overhaul. But a
federally mandated annual test after every grade is not the solution.
It threatens, in fact, to create a two-tiered society: The students
fortunate enough to attend private schools (where no testing is
required by government) will have the cultural education enabling them
to think deeply and broadly, while students relegated to public
schools may not.

Cultural education is a matter of nuance and suggestion, of finding
the spaces between the facts where the truth lives. Most teachers I
know would prefer to spend their time exploring a story's theme and
meaning in a freewheeling class discussion, for instance, than
worrying about the questions on a test.

Ironically, the need for students to be more than rote memorizers of
facts is greater than ever. Thanks to technology, the world changes so
quickly that by the time a student graduates, many of the facts she or
he learned will be obsolete. Education must promote the development of
skills to adapt nimbly to change.

If we turn our public schools into versions of "Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire" -- that is, a parade of exams -- we'll end up with
students ill-equipped for the challenges of the 21st Century.

Standardized tests, clearly necessary at some points along the way,
already are administered in many districts. But a federally mandated
one every year? That plan would require teachers and students to focus
on exams instead of truths.

A dismaying scenario -- and that's no lie.

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E-mail: jikeller@tribune.com

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