Rigorous standards. Bloom's Taxonomy. Common Core State Standards. Best Practices.
A couple of years before Orwell published 1984 he wrote an essay titled, "Politics and the English Language." In it he posits: "Modern writing [communication to a room of parents] at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together longs strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and then making the results presentable by sheer humbug." Yes, he said: humbug.
As I type this parents are hoping their little ones have fallen soundly asleep for their full ten hours, for luck is certainly against them if this night is one of those nights. Please, no bloody noses, no illness, no nightmares... for any of those childhood events could change the outcome of test results. In the city we live in test results largely determine middle school options... and of course the middle school that one attends largely determines the high school one gets in to... and if you don't go on to a good college (admittance and proper preparation for success of course being largely determined by the high school one attended), then you might as well just start amassing your cardboard, your black markers, your abandoned cart, and your listless, yet still adorable dog.
The all-powerful tests are happening this week and next. The tests dominate public education. And yet, for all the space that they demand, I have yet to adequately understand how it is that they offer a proportional contribution to the learning experience. I was an active parent in the parent association last year, so I sat through a few meetings that were supposed to help me better understand how the tests, by steering the curriculum, would help the children become better critical thinkers, etc. The thing that gagged me was the Orwellian flavor that permeated these meetings. Words and phrases were strung together -- always the same words and phrases -- and we, the masses would start nodding. Bloom's Taxonomy? Handouts were given with very basic diagrams -- imagine flowchart like boxes and arrows. What the?!? Part of my education actually dealt with education, and I couldn't make heads or tails of how the damn diagram fit in with the new "rigorous standards" of the "common core" -- yet when I looked out at the sea of accountants and lawyers and artists bobbing their heads and looking properly impressed/interested I was flummoxed.
Undoubtedly, the other parents are brighter than I am, and so perhaps they truly understood the connection. My limited understanding of Bloom's business was that there are multiple ways of learning, roughly categorized into three main headings: thinking, feeling, and doing. HOW, how, how do the months of prepping for the tests address the feeling and doing categories? Fine if the test is focused on the knowing/thinking part of the taxonomy only. I get it. I really do -- THAT (thinking/knowing/analyzing/creating/remembering information/etc.) is what a test would be testing (and for the record, should be testing -- assessing and benchmarking are critical components to education)... BUT, isn't anyone asking (shrilly... hysterically...): Yoo-hoo! When is there time for the other Bloomin' parts??? Can you pull out a part of a whole and use it as if it's whole? That part and parceling and taking out of context seems really... ummm... Big Brother-ish.
(Note: I just Wikipedia'd Bloom's Taxonomy to make sure that I wasn't way, way off... and I found something funny -- speaking of his own handbook Bloom is quoted as saying it is: "One of the most widely cited yet least read books in American education." Yikes. And yes, I do get the irony of having gone to Wikipedia -- the MOST Orwellian cite on the web due to it's ever-changing/constant rewriting of "facts".)
Granted, I just reread 1984, so my brain is teeming with present-day connections (i.e. how my computer has tracked my habits and pops up ads specific to me -- that's gross), but even after peeling away a layer of paranoia, it still remains that our kids are being taught for the seven months faultless formulas and specific strategies to respond to some tests that will spit out a number that will then determine the track of their future (Inner Party? Outer Party? Prole?). And do we go along with it because we are that confident that professionals are always acting in our best interest (never mind that the world of testing is extremely lucrative)? Or because we are afraid of looking like a "prole," or being found out by the thought police?
The inherent looking-to-the-future problem with a revolution is that whatever is torn down must be immediately replaced with something better. And since I don't know what this "better" is right this moment, I can't pull together a revolution in time to help those babies that are (hopefully) sleeping right now. But in the interim I can continue doing what Winston did and appreciate nostalgia... because journals with thick creamy paper, and paper weights of coral enshrined in domed glass can remind us that sometimes, in some ways, our concept of "progress" can be misguided. Sometimes "progress" is nourished and nurtured by fear and ignorance (and money and power and a desire to seem smart), rather than courage and common sense (and beauty and kindness and a willingness to be authentically taught).
I will also remember (and teach my girl and boy) to NOT be like Winston -- the dumbnut trusted O'Brien just because he seemed cool and had cajones.
