Re: High standards - no?!

["Alan Young" <alanyoung@mchsi.com>]

Art -

Through authentic artifacts that show growth from where the child was to
where there are now. Products/projects of their creation carefully done to
show multiple aspects of a child's learning growth and development. Only the
desire to control, constrain, compare, measure (quantify the qualitative,
reduce the dynamic for the static) threatens this authentic. The method is
fine and relates authentically to ends it seeks. It is the attempt to
standardize things out of desires to control stemming from faulty
assumptions that teachers are primarily bad or won't do their job is the
problem here. This is a problem with how persons fundamentally ascribe value
to and makes sense of human nature. Alfie Kohn does a nice job of looking at
this in his work, The Brighter Side of Human Nature.

I actually came to similar thoughts in the 80s separately while in college,
in seminary at Princeton (close to ETS) and in doctoral studies at none
other than the University of Iowa (nearby ACT). The notions of "original
sin" and its permeation throught our society has had devastating effects.
Interestingly this comes partially from a historic, generational
misunderstandings and misteachings of the meaning of Adam and Eve's
encounter with the serpent in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
story in Genesis. If any of us meet, I'll give you another spin on this
based on comparative text study with things like the Epic of Gilgamesh,
Babylonian myths, and so forth. Can't take the credit here, for my major
professors like Jay Holstein, Diogenes Allen, Edwin Loder all helped
influence this thinking and get me to a similar place where Alfie is in his
seminal book, just through a slightly different means. Yes, I can talk the
talk and walk the walk of hermeneutics, interpretation theory, critical
exegesis, symbol theory, epistemological, philosophical, axiological, and
etiological assumptions, systems thinking, historial and logical fallacies,
etc. I know the relationship of philosophy to epistemology to pedagogy to
learning and assessment. I am not a test mechanic expert, but am good at
analyzing whether the vehicle serves the purpose it pretends to and whether
or not this shiny new test can ever do what I want it to do in education. I
can distinguish ends and means. Not to brag but, not bad for a little old
middle school teacher just trying to make a difference from the inside out
and the bottum up, huh. Maybe I better let the textbook companies and
testmakers and politicians tell me what to do cause I'm not sharp enough and
can't be trusted to help facilitate learning and create meaningful learning
experiences and environments on my own with the kids I entrusted to me.

Where is this assumption that most teachers and human being are bad unless
watched, monitored, and controlled, coming from? This is the thing driving
this baby. And someone is driving this horse to death. Its wrong and has bad
consequnces. The solutions it comes up with reveal the assumptions and
intentions of those who exude it. The solutions are far worse problems than
the problems they attempt to cure. This general negative assumption is
certainly not the opinion of most parents (though the media, public
officials, and others are certainly on a mission to change that to create an
atomosphere of fear so that people naively give up their power to those they
wrongly think are protecting them). So who's driving this horse and what are
they trying to do becomes the question. I think we know what's going on. It
is part of the mantra of fear and control that those in power use to keep
the meritocracy favoring them. It is disingenuine for them to pretend any
longer that this is really a drive to help children or the public schools.

These folks need serious help when they govern and rule from the premise
that most people will do bad unless they are controlled by the powerful.
This fundamentally undercuts democracy which has a much more positive
assessment of human nature. This does not mean that I take the polar
opposite (remember my affinity for the dialectic) and think in a Rousseauean
fashion that people are innately good, or that human are tabula rasa
(Lockean). Functionally and environmentally, I believe that much research
shows that people respond much better, in the long run when we expose and
steep children in goodness, caring, love, and expect and notice good in them
and give them a chance to start participating constructively in life,
letting them make a difference, with what their gifts and talents are. You
can get short term things accomplished behavioristically via punishments and
rewards and set up learning in isolated, atomistic ways but it is usually a
terrible price to pay. Its ill-conceived and not pragmatic (in a Deweyan
sense) anyway. Too much long term bad to outwight he short term good. Those
who participate in keeping such a system going have a very narrow
understanding of learning, education, democracy, systems and environmental
thinkning, and humanity indeed.

Alan

A digression -{Art and George C. in particular, why participate in this
horrid work against those of us engaged in this struggle? I can tell that
you like the banter and I can appreciate that. But can you not tell that we
have real work to do and this is not a game for us. Maybe you think that it
is fun to toy with us and distract us, but doesn't that say anything about
yourself? Or maybe you really are in the closet and are yearning to join us
but don't know how to reconcile it with what you do?  Whatever the case,
understand that the vast majority of us are genuine and I hope that you will
be more candid with us as to your real thoughts perspectives, perceptions,
professions. Come clean and reveal yourselves. Hah! No truly. Is it that you
are vested in your jobs? Do you truly believe in this schooling for your own
children if you have any? Are you really so cynical about humans, children,
teachers, democracy, or narrow in your understanding the educational task
that you think standards/testing juggernaut is really critical to the
learning and competency of our children? This is not just for my and others
curiousity. It is rather for me to find out if I should ever reply to you
again. If you have insincere motives, you have that right. I just have
little time to entertain them. If you are truly wresting with these
questions and just have different perspectives, I respect that. But I do not
respect if you are just trying to sabotage our heartfelt, headled efforts or
jsut trying to play with us for your personal sport. we do not know if you
are using us to take our thoughts and ideas to others. So, I think it is
important for you to be a little more open. Maybe others know and I'm just
missing the boat. Fine, fill me in. Otherwise, I am not afraid to ask you
directly about your purposes on this list serv.}