RE: teaching and learning

From: Nate Schmolze (nate_schmolze@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Oct 01 2000 - 05:56:50 PDT


Peter and Mark

Thanks Peter and I definately second that.

I have been subsituting in local schools fulltime for about the past two
months and testing has emerged as a major issue. There was not one
assignment (teaching) that I have done so far where testing was not central.
I covered for teachers trying to get these tests completed from Kindergarten
through second grade. As the day progressed one could easily see the
teachers deterioting. In one assignment I actually went through the tests
trying to come up with some kind a scheme that would be meaningful (not
really possible).
For example, on the tests there would be one question with 5 or more parts
which was graded as a 0 or 1 (if they were all correct). As can be assumed
tests organized in this way can not give any meaningful information to
either the teacher or student. I ended up creating a grid for this teacher
so its limited use could be beneficial to the classroom in some way - she
would not get the official results til some time next year.

October and November are now coming up and if you are in third or fifth
grade, taking tests will be the central activity you will be involved in for
the next two months. Rose (1999) *Powers of Freedom* points out importantly
the mentality of these tests is any problems like the ones Ken mentioned
earlier is solved by more testing .

In addition to the facets you mentioned it seems the candy budgets have been
expanded expotentially.

Mark said,

"Is this all a matter of false consciousness, with the working class
completely fooled as to what is really going on in the schools?

My general sense is that there are major issues with educational equity that
the right has taken up. I don't think "false" get us anywhere. The question
for me is how these issues can be addressed without leaving them
appropriated / misappropriated by the right. I would like to say though -
taking Delpit as an outright critique of whole language is really
misunderstanding what she was trying to say. Whole language being no more a
safe haven from the classing and raceing of education that skill based
instrution. Her critique of whole language was right on in my opinion, but
her critique was also appropriated by those involved in that approach to
literacy. As has been said before the title is "dielemnas of a progressive
black educator".

I do agree that this it not a simple issue, it is definately not one that
can be easily divided along a whole language - skill and drill dichotomy.
They are not mutually exclusive either except maybe in schools of education
and the walls of acadamia. They are techniques or tools at best that can be
used in a variety of ways. Billings for example in emphasizing her
"culturally relevant pedagogy" extracts both a devoted whole language and
phonics based direct instruction as exemplars of that approach. The point is
that both approaches do not accur in a vacuum abstracted from teachers
beliefs. Whole language is just as capable of dividing up society along
class and race lines as "skill and drill" - we need to look deeper I think.

Nate



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 01:01:07 PST