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'A Test You Need to Fail': A Teacher's Open Letter to Her 8th Grade Students
Dear 8th Graders,
I’m sorry.
(llustration: David McLiman)
I didn’t know.
I spent last night perusing the 150-plus pages of grading materials provided by the state in anticipation of reading and evaluating your English Language Arts Exams this morning. I knew the test was pointless—that it has never fulfilled its stated purpose as a predictor of who would succeed and who would fail the English Regents in 11th grade. Any thinking person would’ve ditched it years ago. Instead, rather than simply give a test in 8th grade that doesn’t get kids ready for the test in 11th grade, the state opted to also give a test in 7th grade to get you ready for your 8th-grade test.
But we already knew all of that.
What I learned is that the test is also criminal.
Because what I hadn’t known—this is my first time grading this exam—was that it doesn’t matter how well you write, or what you think. Here we spent the year reading books and emulating great writers, constructing leads that would make everyone want to read our work, developing a voice that would engage our readers, using our imaginations to make our work unique and important, and, most of all, being honest. And none of that matters. All that matters, it turns out, is that you cite two facts from the reading material in every answer. That gives you full credit. You can compose a “Gettysburg Address” for the 21st century on the apportioned lines in your test booklet, but if you’ve provided only one fact from the text you read in preparation, then you will earn only half credit. In your constructed response—no matter how well written, correct, intelligent, noble, beautiful, and meaningful it is—if you’ve not collected any specific facts from the provided readings (even if you happen to know more information about the chosen topic than the readings provide), then you will get a zero.
And here’s the really scary part, kids: The questions you were asked were written to elicit a personal response, which, if provided, earn you no credit. You were tricked; we were tricked. I wish I could believe that this paradox (you know what that literary term means because we have spent the year noting these kinds of tightropings of language) was simply the stupidity of the test-makers, that it was not some more insidious and deliberate machination. I wish I could believe that. But I don’t.
I told you, didn’t I, about hearing Noam Chomsky speak recently? When the great man was asked about the chaos in public education, he responded quickly, decisively, and to the point: “Public education in this country is under attack.” The words, though chilling, comforted me in a weird way. I’d been feeling, the past few years of my 30-plus-year tenure in public education, that there was something or somebody out there, a power of a sort, that doesn’t really want you kids to be educated. I felt a force that wants you ignorant and pliable, and that needs you able to fill in the boxes and follow instructions. Now I’m sure.
It’s not that I oppose rigorous testing. I don’t. I understand the purpose of evaluation. A good test can measure achievement and even inspire. But this English Language Arts Exam I so unknowingly inflicted on you does neither. It represents exactly what I am opposed to, the perpetual and petty testing that has become a fungus on the foot of public education. You understand that metaphor, I know, because we have spent the year learning to appreciate the differences between figurative and literal language. The test-makers have not.
So what should you do, my beautiful, my bright, my intelligent, my talented? Continue. Continue to question. I applaud you, sample writer: When asked the either/or question, you began your response, “Honestly, I think it is both.” You were right, and you were brave, and the test you were taking was neither. And I applaud you, wildest 8th grader of my own, who—when asked how a quote applied to the two characters from the two passages provided—wrote, “I don’t think it applies to either one of them.” Wear your zeroes proudly, kids. This is a test you need to fail.
I wondered whether giving more than 10 minutes of every class period to reading books of our own choosing was a good idea or not. But you loved it so. You asked for more time. Ask again; I will give you whatever you need. I will also give you the best advice I can, advice from the Nobel Prize-winning writer, Juan Ramón Jiménez. Ray Bradbury thought this was so important, he used it as the epigraph at the beginning of Fahrenheit 451: “When they give you lined paper, write the other way.”
It is the best I have to offer, beyond my apologies for having taken part in an exercise that hurt you, and of which I am mightily ashamed.
- Posted in
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152 Comments so far
Show AllThanks Teach for this warm and loving piece. Take heart. Some of your former students will survive this idiocy and their years-long entrapment in it because you and other teachers like you know your stuff, love your stuff and engaged your students in the art, hard work and joy of it all. That matters. It really does.
Paddle well.
My sentiments exactly. As I read this I was reminded of a book written by Richard Mitchell called "Less Than Words Can Say." Written in the 1970s he would be further horrified at the direction English education is taking and most likely agree with Ms Dandrea. He authored The Underground Grammarian ewsletter. I first heard of him on the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder as he was hawking his book "Less Then..." I was fascinated at his scholarship and erudition. So, I suggest everyony download his book free, and maybe give a donation, or maybe get all of his entire files for about a $50 donation. It is well worth it. Do that here:
http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/index.html
There are other sites where you can download the book for free, just Google it, but please do as I did and honor the man and his works and give a little for his efforts and to keep his works alive..
I suspect Ms Dandrea knows about Mr Mitchell, or maybe even knew him, although I don't know her age, sadly he died in 2002.
Ms Dandrea is obviously a caring and great teacher, not unlike some of my public school teachers who really cared for their students and wanted for them to be inspired to pursue lifelong learning as well as to learn their coursework. Thank you Ms Dandrea, you are who we need in public schools to further advance civilization and to educate the populist.
Thank-you, Ms. Dandrea, for speaking the truth to your students.
Teaching from the heart is doing the Lord's work.
Great letter,
Conservatives look at public education and see great big stacks of money to be looted by privatizing public education. They will stop at nothing to advance that cause.
(I posted a link to this article on Facebook)
when 'they' give you lined paper...
when 'they' give you lined paper, ask yourself where the paper came from, and why...
what tree upon what land was felled?
what watershed was destroyed to make the pulp in what factory?
what metals mined and formed for use in such processes?
what chemicals used to bleach the paper, or print the lines?
why is lined paper more important than trees or rivers?
Chomsky's 'attack' warning is a phony...his intent is to slyly stoke enthusiasm for public schools, no matter their known, yet unacknowledged, flaws...
public schools, however, reinforce the notions of property ownership, representative democracy and the correctness of working to pay one's way, even at the expense of the living world...
this is unacceptable educating, and must be stopped...
when 'they' give you lined paper...
who is 'they'?
what is your point? lined paper is bad, plain paper is good, all paper is bad, lines on paper are bad, no lines on paper is good... lines are bad, paper is bad, public schools are bad, stoking enthusiasm is bad, stoking enthusiasm for public schools is really, really bad ...
enthusiasm for public schools? wtf?!?
USAAI!
Idiot.
Paper and the trees from which it is made are renewable resources. So long as waste is minimized, there is an unlimited supply of paper (and wood).
The clause, "when 'they' give you lined paper..." is clearly another way of saying, "when one is given lined paper..." so "they" is a problem only in warped minds.
David Silverman, ESOL teacher
.
Trees are NOT "renewable" given the exploitation and abuse of nature which capitalism relies upon for profit!
In fact, we are experiencing "The Dying of the Trees" since the Industrial
Revolution and capitalism's pollution of the earth.
Or --
Do you understand the volume of bleach which is used to create "white" paper and its
damaging effects on the planet -- ?
Rather, HEMP is the crop we should be growing to provide "paper."
We should be using HEMP oil to run our cars.
The point of ... "when they give you lined paper" is simply saying ...
CHALLENGE ALL AUTHORITY~!!
WAKE UP, AMERICA!!
.
This comment has got to be a joke, and a really, really lousy one at that.
We have more trees today in American than there were a hundred years ago.
This is a fact.
The world looses more trees to FARMING than to paper mills.
Get your facts up-to-date.
You're about 50 years behind the time in your information.
Trees logged for mills are usually old-growth trees that are felled in order to make
room for young trees - since we don't allow wild-fires to burn & destroy them in
a natural way.
Get to the present with your concepts. And figure things out.
You are educated, and need to get your facts from something more than
a select group of propaganda publishers.
Thank you, and have a nice day.
Oh, and yes. Hemp is a wonderful commodity. However, it will be another century
before the public perception of it's non-industrial uses are mainstream enough for any
industrial production and use is possible. So, sober up, clan up, and face life without
a chemically modified perception of reality.
To get "America" to "wake up", you need to get them to TRUST you.
Stating half-truths and biased information will continue dissent against your goal.
Even aged growth stand trees are not good habitat like old growth with snags for woodpeckers and other birds. Your simplistic Rush Limbaugh type rhetoric utterly ignores the reality of ecology, like habitat, erosion, etc. It's not the qualitiy of trees that matter, it's the quality of habitat that matters. That's why I am proud to have done activism with Earth First! to physically block stupid people like you from raping the planet. Please don't breed we have enough dumbasses in the U.S. already!
I live in the heart of timber country, and let me tell you. srblack - you have no idea what you're talking about.
Fires don't usually destroy the old, mature trees; they have thick bark and are quite fire-resistant. In the old-growth forest, fires usually just clear out the underbrush. When a timber company clear-cuts an ancient forest and replants the land with a single species of tree, that in no way resembles the natural process of forest renewal.
I've seen it over and over again - a vibrant, healthy mixed-species forest is mowed down and converted into a monoculture Douglas fir plantation. They try to plant their crop trees thick enough that they shade everything else out. Sure, there are a lot more trees there - instead of widely-spaced large trees, there are now closely-spaced smaller trees. A lot less biomass there, though, and a lot less biological diversity.
Where the timber companies succeed in producing the monoculture they seek, the stand is never as healthy as a mixed stand, but they don't care - the logging costs will be lower when it comes time to harvest if the trees are all the same. It's not truly sustainable, either - experience in Europe has shown that the trees get sicklier with each generation of monoculture planting.
All that BS about clear-cutting old-growth forests mimicking the natural fire ecosystem is just timber company propaganda. All they're really worried about is short-term profits, and cutting down all those big trees makes a big profit. The trees they plant afterward will be mowed down long before they reach maturity in order to generate cash flow; the biological richness of the old-growth forest will never return there.
Well put and factual, thanks.
David, there is no unlimited supply of anything, except, perhaps, ignorance.
This comment is an excellent example of sophistry. Way to say nothing, Dubet!
This is what's so freakin' irritating about environmental extremists, modern society causes a few problems and instead of trying to fix those problems they want to tear down the entire system and go back to living in caves and dying at 30.
It's like you're driving along the road and your car breaks down and instead of figuring out what's wrong with it, fixing it and going on your way you set fire to it and walk the rest of the way.
The whole thought process is moronic.
Speaking of moronic...your post was a string of nothing but ad hominems, but then you have never actually had a face to face conversation with an eco-radical have you, just believed what you heard on Rush or Bill O'Reilly.
Chomsky does not oppose public education, nor does he pretend to. He criticises the *attack* on public education. That does not = public education itself.
He criticises the public education *system* plenty, sure, but not for being public. In large part, he criticises it for becoming less public: less available to those unable to pay, more attuned to the propaganda of corporations.
It seems to me that the only reasonable road here is to work to control public education, not abolish it, bankrupt it, or hand it to the kind of for-profit structures that are constituted by myths of property ownership, that actively work remove representation from the institutions of such democracy as exists and to remove the democracy from representation, and supported by the myth of working to "pay one's way," and everywhere at the expense of the living world -- and the people living in that world not the least.
I am persistently fascinated at how often I hear ethical accusations against Chomsky and how seldom anyone ever cares to argue against the data he assembles or the logic of his arguments. I don't know that any of this applies to you personally, Dubet, but I have the impression that it must be very difficult for very many people that someone so thoroughly informed, so logical, and so utterly non-wild-eyed does not agree with one's own impressions of the world.
I mean, here I am, surely less astute than some, but serious and sincere in my own way. I sample the information of this world mostly via a partial spectrum of a couple types of scampering vibration that I gather through a few apertures, none bigger than a marble. I am fortunate to access a smattering of available texts and recordings, but all by creatures similarly equipped and with tiny lifespans compared to the durations of the processes in which we flail, enmeshed, and which we thereby guide.
Why would there not be disagreement between well wishing people?
the moment Chomsky refused to challenge 911, he was revealed...all of his work falls in light of this, as it can all be seen as decoy...
that one can come up with multiple books containing hundreds of pages each on international politics, yet resort, at crunch time, to ridiculing those legitimately concerned with this large-scale murder is enough for me...
One of the hardest things for most people to learn seems to be that someone can be wrong about something without also being a scoundrel. Or the reverse.
I abominated Robert Heinlein's later-life politics. Yet he loved cats. It was quite hard for me to reconcile what I saw (still see) as an enormous contradiction: how could someone who appreciated cats as he did have such dreadful politics.
People aren't just one thing. That's how.
'someone can be wrong about something'...
we're not just talking about 'someone', we're talking about one of the 'greatest intellects' of our time...
we're not just talking about 'something', we're talking about the most devastating attack on our home soil in recent history, an attack fraught with many questions both physical and procedural, some of which blatantly leave our leaders open to charges of treason...
over the course of an individual's life, there are rare moments of supreme import, moments that rise above the daily routine and offer opportunity to show the exceptional character the rest of the life has been spent developing...
911 is such a moment...
Noam's character fell way short of the needed mark...
he is not alone, of course...
This is just completely idiotic. You disagree in a single, well-argued and absolutely rational (from his part) issue with him, and based on this, you (and loads of people like you) are willing to dismiss *everything* he said, with his entire life's work, because he said something that you simply disagree with.
"that one can come up with multiple books containing hundreds of pages each on international politics, yet resort, at crunch time, to ridiculing those legitimately concerned with this large-scale murder is enough for me..."
That's because quite a few of the theories regarding 9/11 are in fact ridiculous conspiracy theories.
This 9/11 obsession is not just counterproductive - it is worth a dozen full-fledged psy-ops campaigns in terms of misdirection of effort and fragmenting the Left.
Go live in the bush, then. Fashion a spear and hunt the kangaroo - or the buffalo, depending on your local geography. Live a life brutish and short, prey of the wild animals. Forgo the uses of fire, even, if the trees are so precious to you.
We, by which I mean civilised humanity, do not need you. When a bear kills and eats you, we will not notice.
Not defending dubet's post at all (as I disagree with most of it), but yours (which is combining a moral high position with incredible cynicism (or ignorance, no idea)) is quite a bit worse. The reason for this is that "our civilised humanity" (although it's not like you have any right to speak in its name - except if you mean dumbass, rich, egoist, narcissist but still whiny Westerners), or rather our completely uncivilised *totalitarian capitalism* has made what you disingenuously recommend *completely impossible*. "Our civilised humanity" has not only destroyed the buffalo (or the salmon or whatever you can think of), but actually made it *illegal* to do what you suggest. In addition, while you're making this suggestion, you "forget" that we don't have to go back to hunter-gathering, but we could go back to self-sustaining agriculture - and that at least hundreds of millions or even billions of people all over the world would actually love to do that - but they simply *cannot* - since our "civilisation" has robbed them of their land because we need to produce god fucking biofuel to put into our fucking cars.
"We, by which I mean civilised humanity, do not need you. When a bear kills and eats you, we will not notice."
Of course not. "Civilised humanity" doesn't even notice its own victims, let alone anyone else. Except when there's some propaganda advantage to be gained from others' crimes, of course. Civilised humanity my ass. Our good life and "civilisation" is paid for by poverty and exploitation abroad and in the future. So fuck off with your arrogant bullshit.
Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why do you pose such childish, meaningless questions? Why? Why? Why?
why, why, why?
why is it 30 degrees hotter everywhere this year?
why are half of China's rivers unfit for human contact?
why am I downwind from a triple nuclear meltdown?
because of the violent land theft, the resulting slavery and attendant industrial devastation, and the educational system that rationalizes...
the educational system that rationalizes...that would be your cause, I believe...
Her essay is desperately saddening for what it says about the people in power in the edu establishment.
The first two things we learned in our Methodology of Evaluation classes were:
- high-order knowledge (the kind that involves thinking rather than memorisation) cannot be successfully tested using paper and pencil. It can be tested using simulation, or by an extended conversation if the testers are experienced experts in the field. But paper and pencil are worse than useless because someone who doesn't understand the limitations can easily be conned into thinking they're getting meaningful results (Ms D'Andrea clearly wasn't conned).
- constructing a test or questionaire is among the hardest tasks in the world because of how many skills it hooks. The preparer needs to be at least a subject-matter expert so they'll know what to ask, a psycholinguist so that they'll know how to ask it, and a lawyer or computer programmer so that they'll obsessively debug the result before using it in the field.
.
This teacher couldn't be any more accurate or clearer in her words to her
students --
The introduction of "standarized testing" -- computer graded tests - has
profited the testing industry with billions which defrauding the public and
students.
We've know this for decades. All intelligence understands the needs to
do away with this testing.
.
Be careful: standardized tests aren’t necessarily bad: ‘standardized’ only means that the test questions are all the same, they are graded the same way, allow the same amounts of time to complete, etc. Good or bad tests can be standardized, and non-standardized tests are not automatically good. Obviously more damage is done if standardized tests are poorly constructed.
.
Standardized tests as we've known them -- the SAT's, for instance -- are more easily
corrupted than any test prepared by a teacher -- and enables more widespread
corruption. This we've long known. Not so long ago we were talking about getting
rid of these tests. Elites are heavily invested in them as we've seen from the Bush
family's exploitations of education.
Nor would I brag about these tests being the "same" everywhere -- why, indeed, should
they be? We'd be more sure of scores and knowledge of children if the questions were
varied and varied throughout the states and communitiea.
Nor am I aware that any test givers have ever failed to grade properly -- nor that they
had problems with keeping all students to the alloted "time"?. Certainly, any
improperly graded exam, btw, would have been immediately challenged.
Usually teachers went over the problems/answers to tests -- explaining the answers
for those who might not have gotten the correct answer.
Standardized tests are poorly constructed -- we've long known that -- too often
constructed to benefit students from more properous homes -- and males.
As I recall the outcomes -- and it's been quite a while since I've looked at this issue --
females are our scholars. However, SAT "predictions" for males often are much higher
than their actual performance once they get into colleges. Just the reverse for females
who most often do better than predicted by their scores.
One warning about this "Standardized Testing Industry" became obvious decades ago
in the very high PROFITS they are pulling which should sound an alarm to all.
And I'd also mention that these tests are questionable -- as the LSAT -- for suspected
weeding out of students corporations may think "undesirable" in that field of study.
Standardized testing is just one more area of CORPORATE control of education
and we should be ridding ourselves of their influence over education.
Here's some more --
LSAT Magnifies Differences in Educational Attainment
... Test ("LSAT") have also become the focus of intensified criticism. Much of the debate centers on whether standardized tests like the LSAT and the SAT ...
academic.udayton.edu/TheWhitestLawSchools/.../Legaled08.htm - Cached
....The Case Against Standardized Tests - Article by Chris Carter
This criticism of standardized tests is not new. Banesh Hoffman, professor of ... Predictive Validity of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for ...
testcritic.homestead.com/files/standardized_tests.html - Cached
....
Here's a very interesting site --
Pretty much summing up what I'm saying. http://testcritic.homestead.com/files/reply_to_oh_look_a_testing_critic.html
And this deserves an "ugh" -- "bleech," I'd say .... like finding out Rush Limbaugh
or Santorum developed the SAT's!
QUOTE --
And, for those who are interested, here is a quote from Carl Brigham, inventor of the SAT:
"The Nordics are rulers, organizers, and aristocrats... individualistic, self-reliant, and jealous of their personal freedom... as a result they are usually Protestant... The Alpine race is always and everywhere a race of peasants... The Alpine is the perfect slave, the ideal serf... the unstable temperment and the lack of reasoning power so often found among the Irish... Our figures, then, would rather tend to disprove the popular belief that the Jew is intelligent... he has the head form, stature, and colour of his Slavic neighbors. He is an Alpine Slav."
Carl Brigham, 1923 UNQUOTE
PS:: Evidently, when Common Dreams agrees to give us paragraphs, they are
unable simultaneously to actually keep the sentences and paragraphs whole?
(The "preview" does not reflect these errors occurring in the actual post shown.)
******************************************************************************************
:evilgrin:.
.
.
Riveting! And not surprising. Time for us to turn our attention to the SAT and its ilk, my fellow attention-turners...
conscience,
For the most comprehensive destruction of the concepts of educational standards and standardized testing please read Noel Wilson's 1997 PhD dissertation "Educational Standards and the Problem of Error" to be found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577 . There has been no rebuttal whatsoever as his logic is impeccable. As Noel has written to me, "Since 1997 there have been only about 18,000 hits on the study and only 6 or so people have even contacted me about it". Another article by Wilson is "A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review" to be found at: www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5.pdf .
OYE
If Ms. Dandrea actually distributed copies of this impressive letter to her students, as the premise suggests, I wonder if it provoked negative feedback from colleagues, administrators, and especially parents upset at the prospect of such candor and forthrightness "giving away the game".
I find the letter, sophisticated and in no way dumbed down, perfectly suitable for an intelligent and well-taught 8th-grade class.
But I'd expect reactionary Normals to freak out over the prospect of an Authority Figure and Role Model expressing, and implicitly encouraging, subversive critical thinking that Questions Authority.
Also, reading the letter evoked the writings of Robert Pirsig. He might say that the English Language Arts Exam in particular, and standardized testing in general, simply doesn't test for Quality.
Wow, yes. It's been about 40 years since I first read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Your mention of Robert Pirsig brought that time of my youth flooding back to me, a time of adventure in the exploration of ideas.
thank you, OS, for mentioning Pirsig...
what a fascinating tale, his...
the elusive, ethereal Quality you mention, and correspondingly dark institution...
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a magical work, showing great personal courage and command...
the crossing of the high pass, the small town master welder, the anguish of logic...
wonderful...
Of all the many pathologies in this rotting corpse of a society, the assault on public education is surely one of the most monstrous. We might as well just eat the children as deliberately ruin their minds and life prospects in this way.
Commenters on here often claim there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. Mostly this is silly hyperbole. Democrats may be bad, but Republicans are way worse.
But on this issue what these commenters say is true. There is no difference whatsoever--zero, zilch, nada--between the (K-12) education policies of Bush and Obama.
That is the reason people say there is no difference between dem and rep because, not just in educational policy, but across the board there isn't any difference between the two. Well not quite true, Obama has taken Bush policy and radicalized it even further.
To say, as Dubet does, that Chomsky's warning is "phony" because public education is flawed is to (deliberately?) misread Chomsky's intentions. He is one of the most powerful advocates of independent critical thinking and anti-corporate vaues, which of course Dubet would know if he wasn't not-so-subtly advocating for privatized education.
I'm not familiar with Dubet's other posts, but I didn't see this one as advocating for private education (which also uses lined paper). More likely, he/she is preaching some variant of "don't think, feel". Anti-intellectualism is not confined to the Tea Party, after all, it has its equivalent on the Left in some of the sillier fringes of New Ageism.
I don't think dubet was advocating for privatized education, but rather the fact that no matter what "kind" of education it is, the problem is systemic.
I wasn't going to comment on this article, though I agree with it wholeheartedly, as I've decided to cut back, but your idea of giving these books to your friends is absolutely brilliant. What a thoughtful, lovely idea! An antidote to all the craziness, a truly loving gesture.
Have you read "Voltaire's Bastards" by John Ralston Saul? Probably, you have; if not, please do.
Hi Red Balloon,
Although I take issue with several of Dr. Saul's conclusions, I would recommend his works to any serious reader. The complete philosophical trilogy consists of, "Voltaire's Bastards", "The Doubter's Companion" and "The Unconscious Civilization". Not necessarily easy reading but, in my opinion, worth the effort nonetheless.
Other works by Saul I would recommend, "Reflections of a Siamese Twin" and "On Equilibrium"
Sorry for jumping in here.
Take care of yourself
Thomas Gilbert-
No, that's great! I actually have 4 of his books. I was lucky to hear him on one of his book tours - a loooong time ago. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, he's an important observer and ought to be on everyone's list. I lent "Voltaire's Bastards" to the history teacher at the school where I taught. He said afterward that it completely changed his view of history and from then on, he taught it differently.
Peace and blessings.
You're welcome. You'll enjoy it. You may not be swayed by all he says, but you'll have plenty of moments of recognition.
I'm 42, back in college again, and I see, in the classroom, evidence of the ill effects of standardized testing on the young. Most of the younger generation is overtly concerned with exactly what kind of answers a professor is looking for in essays and on tests, which suggests that independent critical thinking skills have not been inculcated in them. Unfortunately, some teachers are also perpetuating this by seeking mere summarizations of readings and expressly forbidding personal opinions and conclusions. As for myself, I approach essays and tests in my own personal fashion, and have been lucky enough to not yet run up against a teacher who thoroughly abhors those approaches; in fact, I was lucky enough last year to have an English professor who named me Humanities Student of the Year at my college. How many such students can possibly come out of the rote-test-robotic-thought school of education?
Ruth Ann Dandrea:
She put out a finger and stroked her sister's quill; she smiled her rare smile.
"I seen the little lamp," she said, softly.
Then both were silent once more.
This is the best way I can think of, in complementing you for your 29 years of teaching experience. It appears you have seen the [little lamp] and more, that Katherine Mansfield was referring to in her short story The Doll’s House.
Thank You.
NCLB is making every child a Texas Scholar - just like the corporations want it.
The Hitler Jugend, the Soviet Young Pioneers, and doubtless many more, including our own children.
The idea was by rote memorization and regurgitation of "facts."
Der Fuehrer knows best. Seig Heil!! Etc., etc., etc.
The idea is to condition youth into obedient robots, doing what they are told for the good of the Fatherland, whatever Fatherland that may be.
We are raising plenty of cannon fodder for our wars of choice and greed.
Thank you, Ruth Ann, for your attempt to stem this tide. Best of luck to you.
Thank you for this article.
After all these years, it has finally become clear to me why the highest score I got on my AP exams was in the topic I knew least about. What I wrote for that topic was total BS and based only on the text provided. I expected to fail.
Guess I should have taken even more exams-less you know, better the score!