We had a district training yesterday. The first part of the day was dedicated to Response To Intervention (RTI) ideas presented by some great district personnel. The thing that was interesting to me and really got me thinking had to do with a video that they started out with. You may have seen it already. It is a simple film with some moving music and phases that were flashed up on the screen. All the sentences had to do with world demographics, specifically with the population dynamics of China and India in comparison with those of the US. One of the statistics read that there are more honor students in China than there are students in the whole U. S.. The whole film seemed to have an underlying scare dyamic to it with the basic theme of ...If we don't make our kids smarter than there's, then our society and our way of life will vanish from the world power scene... so ... you had better start really thinking about your teaching!! I think that many of us did have a bit of a "watch out there coming!" type of response, but it also got us thinking a little bit as well. I don't know if I really agree with that type of rational for trying to teach well. I think that motivation should come from the needs of the students as opposed to trying to beat out the Chinese... I don't think we are going to be able to compete with them at certain levels anyway. I would hate to think that we enter into some sort of cold war mentality and feel like they are the enemy... even though we do have some pretty significant differences. A cool head should prevail. But... the point of this blog has to do more with the large picture goals and directions in education. If we are trying to make our kids competitive in the world economy of tomorrow, many of the the specific skills that we are teaching them today will be obsolete. Doesn't it make a lot more sense to focus on and test for processing skills like problem solving and sythesis? Mrs. Demallo, one of the teachers in the training said that much of what she had learned in her communications major at her university is now obsolete. The skills required in the field are not what she learned in her classes. One of our super star teachers, Susie Wren pointed out that much of what we test the kids on is not what they are really going to need to know in the world of the future. Testing can easily serve the purposes of the student labeling, number crunchers in the cubicle as opposed to the education needs of the kid in the classroom! I don't know... help me out everyone... It seems that if we are going to give our kids a chance, we are going to have to really have to focus on and test for the big picture, higher level type things... seeing the Why behind the How.
1 comment:
I agree regarding the whole "scare tactics" approach. What is sad about this is, when you compare us to other countries, you are comparing apples and oranges. For example, we are always compared to Japan. Japan does not educate EVERYONE like we do. Students are tracked very early (2nd grade) into college or vocational education. Those in vocational don't even go to school nearly as long, and they are of course excluded from all of the testing data. But that is the data that is being used to compare us. Also excluded are those that are differently abled. It infuriates me that politicians use this false data to show how US education isn't working. Not that we can't improve - of course we can. But when you look at real data, we have done nothing but get better since the inception of US public education. This profession can be so frustrating at times! :-)
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