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TechnoratiScience Education: Another Casualty of NCLB?
"If you can hear my voice, show me a Joshua Tree Cactus...
If you can hear my voice, show me a butterfly's proboscis."
As soon as I gave these instructions, the twenty or so first graders at my student teaching placement in San Leandro, CA quickly struck a pose, arms out, with their fingers sprawled in all directions (Joshua Trees)... and then just as quickly made a curling motion out from their nose with their hands (proboscises). This was a fun way I had come up with of getting their attention, which had the added benefit of reinforcing what we had been learning in our science units on plants and butterflies this semester. As part of their science curriculum the students explored the parts and functions of plants, the relationship of plants to their habitats, and the life cycles of butterflies. Much of what they learned came from acting as real scientists: they observed the growth of their personal bean plants and noted what plants need to live and grow; they dissected different parts of a plant; and they got to raise their very own class butterflies from caterpillars and chart their development. They also sang songs to help them remember names and facts and they even went on two field trips related to science — one to see carnivorous plants at the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco and one to observe butterflies in the wild at a migration destination on the edge of a golf course. Needless to say, the children loved it, and I know that they learned a great deal both about these content areas and about the nature of science itself.
At the same time I know that less than 9 miles away, at the "program improvement" school I was placed at in Oakland last year, these sorts of experiences would be nearly impossible. In my eight week placement at that school there was not time for a single lesson on science, and I know that this trend most likely continued for the rest of the year. Due to the overwhelming pressure to improve math and reading scores for the school, in order to meet No Child Left Behind requirements, the students spent the entire morning on Open Court reading lessons, with the afternoons similarly devoted to math instruction. What was lost in the scramble was time for stand-alone lessons in subjects like art, music, science, and community-building. Because the middle class San Leandro school I am teaching has scored higher on the state-wide STAR tests it is allowed to spend more time on these subjects, which I believe have immense value and greatly improve the students' overall learning experience. Thus, when I look at these two student teaching placements side-by-side, I find that something is clearly wrong with this picture of education in America.
The U.S. Department of Education claims "America's schools are not producing the science excellence required for global economic leadership and homeland security in the 21st century." While one of the principal underlying messages here is good — that we need to pay more attention to science education in the US — another implication, which is being echoed around the country, is that our main problem lies in schools not knowing how to teach science. This notion, I believe, deserves closer inspection. The Urban Institute, in fact, did just that, and in the fall of 2007 came out with a report that stated "the data we have reviewed suggest that secondary and higher education systems are providing more than adequate supply [of science and engineering graduates] for industry's hiring needs."
So maybe there isn't a dramatic problem with our supply of scientists now... but will there be? I worry that the facts of this debate could change dramatically in several years when the impact of what Richard Rothstein terms "curriculum narrowing" (LA Times Editorial, 11/27/07) in our public schools as a result of No Child Left Behind gets fully realized. If schools continue to focus solely on math and reading in the elementary grades in order to improve their test scores, then it's likely that the affected students won't be adequately prepared for high school AP science classes, and much less advanced degrees and careers in science. Clearly this impact would be greater for students attending "program improvement" schools like my former school in Oakland, but the pressure to score high on standardized tests is felt throughout the public school system.
One could argue that more testing in science is the solution to all of this, in order to hold schools "accountable" for science as well. That is, in fact, part of the U.S. Department of Education's stated plans. I worry, however, that this could lead us down a slippery slope in which all of the goals of public education-from an understanding of history to an appreciation of the arts-will be accompanied by a high — stakes test with resulting punitive consequences for low-income and minority schools. Is that really what we want our education system to look like?
The idealist in me would like to think we could pull ourselves out of this rapidly deepening hole we're digging and take a broader view of the purposes of education. Just as I don't think we should teach art simply to produce enough Picassos and Rembrandts among our populace, I would argue that we shouldn't teach science just to ensure American competitiveness in the modern globalized field of science. Maybe we should also teach it because it's a field that we value as a society, and because we find the study of science to be enriching to the lives of individuals. This would mean that all students should have a shot at learning science, not just those at the "high performing" schools. And maybe, just maybe, in the process of learning about Joshua Tree Cacti and butterfly proboscises, these children will decide that learning is fun... and should be freely pursued throughout one's life.
Tamara Henry is a second year graduate student in UC Berkeley's Developmental Teacher Education program. Through this program she is pursuing her Masters degree in Education and an elementary teaching credential. So far she has student taught in four different schools in the San Francisco Bay Area at a variety of grade levels. She hopes to be an active proponent of education reform throughout her teaching career.
25 Comments so far
Show AllI believe I have this right: NCLB applies only to the public schools (attended by the poor and Democrats) and does not apply to private, Republican and Christian schools where the students are not required to take the tests (and presumably where teachers will therefore not be held accountable for student "achievement".)
Apparently Congress and the Bush administration care only that the children of the poor and Democrats get a good education. And if you believe that, I've got some shares of Harken Oil I'd like to sell you.
Sen. Edward Kennedy is a supporter (and perhaps a co-author) of NCLB. I wrote to him last May urging major changes to or the scrapping of NCLB. No reply as yet.
and of course there's the NCLB mandate of military recruitment on campuses so they can take the dumbed down kids off to war. What a travesty to tolerate such a system...Hopefully the next President and Congress will repeal this failed NCLB crap and end the war so we can fund the schools equally.
Educated sheep are too hard to herd and they won't make good cannon fodder. They do need to quietly submit to and answer certain tests to be useful as good debt ridden slaves. NCLB is the best system yet devised to attain these goals.
The Bush Administration makes the Roman Catholic Church during Galileo's lifetime seem tame."
The comparison , I'll admit , is a bit exagerated but please , give the exaspirated poster some slack . We all indulge in hyperbole occasionally don't we ?
Never mind their relative extremes,they were and are both bullies and eventually were not and presently should not be tolerated.
Social studies will be next for NCLB testing. Imagine what they'll do to history, geography, and the rest! Start memorizing those dates and capitals, kids. Thinking skills won't be necessary.
One more thing: I didn't intend to seem at all critical of the writer's piece, I was rather responding to the comments it and other stories on huffpost about education have generated.
There's a a lot of criticism of public schools from the right and the left, and some of it is certainly justified, but a lot of it is just uninformed and ideologically driven. NCLB has put a lot of stress and distraction into schools, and stretched resources. It's pretty clear that the purpose of it is to discredit the whole idea of public education, and the left ought not to be collaborating in that by trashing schools.
I hear people saying pretty broad things about schools being about indoctrination, not education. There is a left and a right version of this critique. As someone with a wide range of experience in schools, I would like to offer a more nuanced stance: schools are a contested area, in which people of many backgrounds and ideologies and priorities try - through local government process and informal community involvement; limited and occasionally helped by state and federal funding - to agree on how their children can be educated together.
This is a good thing. In fact, if one group "won" this debate, then some other segment of our communities would be permanently unrepresented, and forced to pay for the privilege. One definition of ethics is that if there is a deal going, you would be willing to take either end of it. The left ought to support cultural pluralism in schools. Now, that doesn't mean I support creationism being taught as science, nor do I support political speech being masked as education. But I do know that we are kidding ourselves if we think that schools can be either A: value neutral, or B: ideologically pure in some way we prefer.
I believe that one problem with "education reform" is that it seeks some kind of illusory perfection. This will never happen, nor would it be healthy. Kids learn more than reading and writing and arithmetic and history and arts in schools: they learn about us, the grownups, and what we believe and expect. The parents and teachers and officials who form school governance are representative of the world the kids are going to have to enter and deal with. Creating some kind of perfect zone of enlightenment is wrong-headed even if it were possible.
What is more important is that we insist on full funding and equity in funding for all school children's education. It should be a priority, the first fruits of our budgets, not a boat that is tossed on the seas of property tax assessments and state surpluses and shortfalls. If the left were consistent about supporting this, instead of obsessed with the doomed efforts (and occasional, always short-lived successes) of a few fundamentalists to insert religion into education, the social and cultural aspects of the problem would sort themselves out. The arguments in our culture about religion and sexuality are being won in spite of posturing rhetoric by leftists and other activists, not because of them. Positive change is happening because of people's social experience. You can't argue people into having had different lives. You can, however, agree to work together in a shared space with some ground rules of mutual respect and productive collaboration. And in most places, most of the time, that's what happens in public schools. Yes, there are many problems. But resource fights are usually pretty central to them, and insults get us nowhere.
Kids are natural scientists. When presented properly, they love science.
Here in our area, we've taken matters into our own hands. We've started robotics "teams" for students. Elementary through high school. All volunteer leadership. They learn real-world engineering skills. Science & technology are stressed and "glamorized" much like sports. Kids here drop out of their sports teams to take part. It is FUN. Robotics is a growing trend worldwide.
go to www.usfirst.org
NCLB Neocons Controlling the Learning of Bullshit
Jeez! The editors haven't restored all of Fridays headlines yet? Who's the mole?
"The Bush Administration makes the Roman Catholic Church during Galileo's lifetime seem tame."
You better check your history books son. I'm no fan of Bush
but your analogy is a little exagerated.
I taught two years in an Oakland elementary school. This was before NCLB was implemented.
Even then, the school was a mess. Many of the students came from broken homes, lived with a grandma, auntie, etc, poverty, drugs, gangs, violence and hopelessness were everywhere everywhere, and, of course, there was almost a complete lack of socialization in the arts of conflict mediation, listening, respect and focusing.
In the above atmosphere, elementary school was viewed by many caregivers as a babysitting service.
So, after boring the kids to death with a scripted reading program, Open Court, we had to shovel math down their throats. At the beginning of each class, teachers and their classes were required to orally review and call out the phonetic sounds of English...just like we used to pledge of allegience to the flag.
Because we followed a rather rigid script, teachers had very little opportunity to make reading interesting. (Open Court is not interesting to most students.)
As a teacher, I had to face classes in which the students represented a wide range of ethnic groups (some antagonistic), abilities to speak and read English, parental expectations relative to public behavior, and parental/caregiver knowledge of, and experience in US elementary classrooms.
By the 5th grade, many parents/caregivers didn't possess the knowledge needed to help their kids with homework...even if they were willing to do so.
Last, schools are increasingly forced to solve social problems that were earlier dealt with, or caused by other social institutions.
Education is only one institution of the five or six necessary for a working society.
We live in an extremely dysfunctional society; if that premise is accepted, it means that a dysfunctional society produces dysfunctional social institutions.
Moreover, the primary institution, the economy, is not producing enough good-paying, interesting and secure jobs. In fact, the way it is organized (dysfunctionally), causes the rest of society's institutions to be dysfuntional: the media, religion, education, polity, and family
What type of society are we educating (not simply training) our young people for? It doesn't appear that we are training them to be active, knowledgeable citizens, or skilled working and thinking people.
I do know that sociology and history are not thought of highly in our society. And their is a reason why this is so.
However, psychologically-oriented approaches (with their wide panopoly of behavior-controlling medications)are widespread and well funded.
Guess what it is?
It's not so much that they want to horde all the good things for themselves, although that goes with the territory of repression, but they want to keep all of the governed populations subservient. If the citizenry are independant in regards to their food and energy and knowledge, then they are not so easily controlled. What that scum which tries to rule the world doesn't understand, and what is a going to be a prime factor in their downfall, is that a deprived and subservient people restricts the quality of the personnel which enters into the controlling class.
By restricting the knowledge of science, such as was eloquently demonstrated today on this site when they hid the discussion on the third dialectical which deals with true science and spurns creationism and corporate science dogmatism, the corporate governments will always be seeking for immigrant scientists to fill the positions that their own citizenry should be educated for. That is the "brain drain" so disdained by the developing countries and which the corporate governments purposely utilize as a weapon to weaken other countries.
tonkatsu is really on target.
Supposedly, schools were getting into teaching critical thinking and analysis. Which of course can be dangerous. And Is part of real learning.
As a boomer, I was lucky to live through the space program's triumphs (yeah I know it was part of the military), the Life magazines with incredible photography of the human body, open heart surgery, transplants...
More recently,I've seen some of the wonders of appropriate technology and the use of science.
Youth and our larger society need to know more about science than when I was younger. For themselves and as citizens.
The Bush Administration makes the Roman Catholic Church during Galileo's lifetime seem tame.
Denying global warming, attacking the environment, closing EPA libararies, attacking whistle blowers in the sciences and everywhere for that matter, enriching fossil fuel corporations, cutting health care & mass transit, using toxic and inhuman weapons (DU, questionable vaccines, cluster bombs, Mark 77 bombs (new improved Napalm!), white phosphorus, the list seems endless.
Bush, the Neocons and Religious Right are anti-science because the true scientific inquiry is atttempting to know some of the greater Truth in the universe.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said that science and religion aren't rivals. Unfortunately, when religion is used to gain power, any truth is a danger to it. And to profits.
This underscores yet anther reason why this election is so critical. We have suffered 8 years under a "faith based" regime that does not believe in science or anything else but greed. The Rethuglican hopeful- Huckleberry, believes that the Earth is 6000 years old and that anyone who professes faith in Jeebus should be released from prison regardless of their crime. This ugliness has been metastasizing since Ray-gun and has reached fruition under the dismal intellect of GWB. I don't have enough years left to suffer any more of this nonsense. Heck I didn't have that many years to spare to begin with.
While it is true that I did not move to Mexico to get my kids out of an "american" education but of course that certainly has happened.
I have to pay for their education in a private school but taxes on other items here are low and I can afford to do so. They have Math, Science,(no anti-Darwinism here), art, computer, History Spanish and English . The kids have P.E. but there are no team sports with leagues and all that nonsense. If one wants their kid to participate in that sort of sports it's available outside the school at an added cost.
tonkatsu:
A brilliantly worded summation. That is why I have told my son once he gets his degrees in computer science engineering and Japanese from Ohio State to go to Japan and never look back, as much as I will miss him. Perhaps things may change in the next few years - we'll see.
tonkatsu describes our public elementary and high school's very well. They are designed to socialize, not to educate.
Hoa binh
The real drive behind the No School Left Teaching Act is the realization that better educated students are too likely to ask "inconvenient questions" when political "Leaders" bloviate.
They are prone to Think for Themselves when important issues are at stake.
They challenge the status quo in overwhelming numbers when they perceive problems or injustice.
They tend to "Vote the Rascals Out" at election time.
They refuse to accept that a minimum wage job is all that they need or should hope for.
They also tend to "stray" away from Fundamentalist religions in droves.
Once you understand the "Problems" caused by too much education, you begin to understand why there has been a 30 year battle on the part of conservatives and fundamentalists to take over and control Education in this country.
Both Conservatives and Fundamentalists have the same goal in mind: Make sure the majority of students leave school brainwashed into obedient sheep, convinced that a McJob is the best they can or should hope for and that All is Right in this Best of all McWorlds, Under Ghod.
Notice that the politicians who create these "failing" schools have made sure that their Own children attend highly competitive schools which emphasize their "Divine Right" to lead the next generation of sheeple.
We've gone from the "Divine Right of Kings" to the Divine Right of the Super Rich.
Science? Everything Americans need to know is written in their Bible. God's word is 'scientifically' correct as of 3,000 years ago. That was well before the Dark Ages.
The answer to both science education and NCLB can easily be found with new initiatives from a Democratic administration and Congress. Why wait? Why debate?
Good post tonkatsu.
Their disdain for science and love of religious superstition contradicts conservative consumer's high appreciation of science's benefits. This contradiction can be explained by the oligarchy's intent to keep the people ignorant.
The oligarchy peddles "leadership" to centralize power. They and their conservative servants try to keep people dependent on corruptible leaders when with the internet We the People can be the lawmakers. We no longer need "leaders" to make our decisions for us. We only need good examples to follow.
Direct democracy is the proven way to overcome the international oligarchy.
them , that would be the kings of this world , want to horde all the good things , for themselves , including science.
The corporate governments purposely keep their schools dysfunctional because, as stated above, they fear knowledge. The citizenry having a knowledge of the reality of science and history would inculate a resentment against the criminal organizations which really run all of the corporate governments, especially pertinent in the U.S.A.. They are so on top of that repression that a discussion in one of yesterday's headlines on this site which was beginning to deal poignantly with the subject has been removed, along with all other headlines for Friday the 4th. No doubt, it is probably scheduled to reappear in a day or so when it will naturally slip down the headline list and supposedly disappear from the discussion radar of those interested in the topic.
The only way that a decent education for all children can be assured is if education is a state responsibility whereby a full education is a right of every citizen, free of any cost. Of course, such a system will never materialize in any criminal corporate government run country, so to see an example of how such an education system works it is necessary to study one which is successful, such as is Cuba's.