GET UP, STAND UP. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE
“First they came for the……and then they came for me, but there was nobody left.” Most of us can quote Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous lines, at least some of them. At least the gist of it. Most of us give tacit voice to it’s message. We get it, so of course we’d like to think we would stand up for the oppressed, the least among us.
Well, people, the time is now.
CHOICE. STANDARDIZED TESTS. PUBLIC HUMILIATION OF TEACHERS AND SCHOOLS. FOR PROFIT CHARTERS. We’re seeing the newest fads in public education take over our lives. Yet where is the movement to counteract it? We’re watching an entire generation of teachers who have learned nothing but to “teach to the test.” And students, if they care at all, are learning to spew factoids in record time.
“Grandma,” my six year old granddaughter told me, “If I don’t get to Step Six in math I can’t go to second grade.” What! Believe me, people, she did not think that up all by herself.
Kids are being judged on tests that may not even be valid or reliable (remember those words from Statistics 101?) and we’re being told that the only skills worth testing are reading and math.
Reading and math are important, sure, but what about the legacies that civilizations leave? See, for example, Ancient Greece, Mozart, cubism, Michael