Thursday, May 29, 2008

Swimming Upstream....












The 21st Century Global Economy?

Standardization.

No.

Children. Each a unique individual worth more than all the material possessions in the world. And wonderfully resistant to being standardized.

Keep on loving the children and keep on swimming upstream!

1 comment:

Yvonne Siu-Runyan said...

With regards to NCLB, an oxymoron:
1. Many are afraid of differences and want us all to be standardized, an exercise in pure futility.
2. Many think that one's ability to spout isolated facts equals being smart, when in fact knowing isolated facts don't add up to critical thinking.
3. Many think that the same dumb factory model applies to every situation, like schools.
4. Many think that we can foresee and control the future.
5. Many don't understand that the concept of mastery is an oxymoron, and is a limiting idea.
6. Many think that they know what is best for others, thus those many dumb laws, which only fuel the building of more jails, and the hiring of more rent a cops.
7. Many are afraid of diversity.
8. Many think there really is a place called Lake Wobegon.
9. Many don't understand the power of providing sound information, and that marketers use such schemes as "attracting" in their marketing plan to manipulate their audience, thus pandering to the lowest level of human motivation.
10. Many don't understand the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
11. Many are too busy climbing the ladder of "so-called" success, and don't realize it is a dumb game put in place and created by those who want to control our every thought and deed.
12. Many are being duped and being controlled by fear and punishment, blame and shame.
13. Many don't understand that "at grade" level uses the the normal distribution curve. This is a basic mathematical principle.
14. Many don't realize that teachers are the ones who make the difference, not some test or some script written by arrogant and greedy people far away from the classrooms.
15. Many don't understand that the bottom-up model works better than the top-down one.
16. Many think that competition is better than cooperation.
17. Many only look at the quarterly report - the dumb high stakes test scores (the self-defeating business model), instead of considering the long haul.
18. Many can't see the forest for the trees.
19. Many are lemmings, and believe everything they hear or read, thus they follow blindly.
20. Many don't understand the difference between education and training, justice and law, morality and religion, heroes/heroines and celebrities.
21. Many don't learn from the lessons of history.
22. Many are fueld by fear and the there's not enough for everyone mentality - "I got mine, too bad for the rest."
23. Many don't realize that we humans are no better than other species who inhabit this earth.

I am sick of "teacher bashing" and those who don't understand and value teachers. Teacher bashing is the national past time in the U.S. and this must stop.

Yvonne Siu-Runyan