The Testing Games Part 3: Hope or Fear? Choose Collaboration over Competition. #KnowYourOptions
Originally posted on GatorBonBC
Welcome back to The Testing Games, where the odds are never in your favor! In our last episode, we met the comical, hypocritical teacher, Effie Trinket. Today, we take a look at the leader of this game, Master Testing Coordinator, King of Rigor and Keeper of the Games, President Snow:
President Snow: Seneca… why do you think we have a winner?Seneca Crane: [frowns] What do you mean?President Snow: I mean, why do we have a winner? I mean, if we just wanted to intimidate the districts, why not round up twenty-four of them at random and execute them all at once? Be a lot faster.[Seneca just stares, confused]President Snow: Hope.Seneca Crane: Hope?President Snow: Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.
Hope, he says, is stronger than fear, but fear is what he utilizes to control the masses. Using propaganda eerily effectively, President Snow, of the blockbuster, The Hunger Games, not only convinces parents to send their children off to slaughter, he somehow has them convinced that their country depends on it. He is a master manipulator, brainwashing parents into believing that competition, at any cost, is good.
Don’t be fooled.
Education experts have long questioned the role of competition in our education system. In our dog eat dog society, it may seem necessary to maintain this value system throughout school, but the opposite is true. Students grow and learn better in an environment of cooperation, not competition.
Consider this analysis:
“One of the primary ways oppression in any and all of its varieties operates is when the dominant group, in this case adults, pit members of minoritized groups, in this case youth, against one another through competition for gold stars and grades, for supposedly scarce resources, for attention, love, and affection, for financial and career success, and, in the metaphor of The Hunger Games, for life itself.”
Pitting children against one another has become the expected status quo in schools today. Even our US President entitled his education plan, The Race to the Top, a program that fosters competition right in its name. US students take countless, standardized, high stakes tests, Badass Teachers Association: The Testing Games Part 3: Hope or Fear? Choose Collaboration over Competition. #KnowYourOptions:
The Testing Games: Know Your Odds, Know Your Options. #BeATribute – I Volunteer, Sir
http://badassteachers.
A Return to The Testing Games – Part 2: What the Eff ?
http://badassteachers.
http://badassteachers.
A Return to The Testing Games – Part 2: What the Eff ?
http://badassteachers.
