Common Sense!
Can't teach it (much). Can't buy it. There is no substitute for
it.
Is it common sense that a group of parents, with mostly no
relevant (if any) higher education, are qualified or equipped to set standards
and policy on what and how the children in their school district should be
taught?
Indeed not.
I have no issue with a private school doing pretty much whatever
they please, as long as it can get parents to pay for the privilege.
With pubic schools, however, I think we are fools to allow TDH
(Tom, Dick and Harry Dorothy, and Herm) to have a say on
curriculum and policy. They are just not qualified!
I would be perfectly OK if a school board were in charge of hiring
a panel of professionals who anonymously make decisions on their behalf. It
would be in line with the best of American constitutional traditions and the
spirit of the founding fathers, who were smart to realize that we, the unwashed
masses, should not be electors. Oh, wait - maybe we screwed that one up a bit,
my fellow populists...
Instead, we congratulate ourselves on the freedom and right to
decide how and what our children will be taught. This regional anarchy of
decision-making on school matters results in parents driving down the standards
of education towards an "A for effort", "everyone's a
winner", head-in-the-sand parental avoidance of responsibility that aims to
ban bad news about our offspring.
What we are doing is failing our children, because the day they
send their first resume to their first prospective employer, they will find
that the real world expects results (or capital).
The intern with the larger "SAT vocabulary" will be the
one to get the promotion. I guarantee it. Too bad your parents nixed
standardized testing - you had no reason to study "SAT words".
Would you like to be a doctor? A lawyer? Guess what - to get there
you need to be able to take tests, but again "Ooops!" - in your
school district they did not quite get to the interesting parts of genetics in
Biology class because the school board insisted on balancing your education
with a dose of creationism.
Et cetera stupidity ad nauseum! (Yep - I took the SAT)
I have no idea if standardized testing is good or bad. And I don't
really care. It is how the world works, probably because that is how our minds
work - constantly categorizing and looking for ways to classify and order
things: fight/flight, good/bad, love/hate, like/dislike, smart/boring,
educated/not, dangerous/cuddly, capable/not, employable/not, promotable/not.
Instead of looking at standardized testing as forcing our children
to conform to a one-size-fits-all mold, we should use it as a teaching tool
about overcoming societal constraints outside of our control.
I once told my children that it is important to learn how to pass
a test. Actually learning the material on the test is optional, I said.
Instead, they should "really" study only what truly interests them,
but only AFTER the lowest common denominator of the test is out of the way. The
point is to teach personal discipline and the ability to think for
themselves and make their own choices.
When I went to school, the teachers had their lesson plans (for
the year) ready on the first day of school and I don't remember continuous
education and in-service days (what are those anyway?). We went to school 5
days a week, the school year was shorter, vacations longer, everyone in 3rd
grade studied the same math book and if anyone had suggested a
"restorative circle" as a way to resolve conflict, we would have come
up with "ROFL" before text messaging was a thing.
Middle-aged nostalgia you say? Maybe. Or common sense? After all -
what are the long summer vacations for - let's get those service days,
continuous education, union negotiations, lesson planning, book selecting, out
of the way then, why don't we? And let's make sure we pay all teachers a
12-month salary if they do 12 months of work, like most do.
What really triggered this rant was in fact something only
marginally related. It was this:
"ByThe Associated Press, March 12, 2022
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mississippi-assistant-principal-fired-book-choice-83411025
JACKSON, Miss. -- An assistant principal in a Mississippi school district has
been fired after he read a children's book to a class of 2nd graders that
district leaders said was inappropriate.
Toby Price was fired last week
after reading “I Need a New Butt,” a children's book by Dawn McMillan, to
students at an elementary school in Byrum, a suburb of the state capital of
Jackson. He had served in the post for three years until his firing."
On Amazon, the book in question is described like this:
"A
silly story that will cause boys and girls to giggle from beginning to
end!" — Norman Public Schools
A young boy suddenly notices
a big problem — his butt has a huge crack! So he sets off to find a new one.
Will he choose an armor-plated butt? A rocket butt? A robot butt? Find out in
this quirky tale of a tail, which features hilarious rhymes and delightful
illustrations. Children and parents will love this book — no ifs, ands, or
butts about it!
"I can assure you right now that your kids
will love this book. They will giggle, they will laugh, and they will want this
book to be read over and over again because it is just plain silly and funny …
the perfect kid-combo." — Storywraps
https://www.amazon.com/Need-New-Butt-Dawn-McMillan/dp/0486787990"
Really?
Who empowered the so-called "district leader" to fire a teacher
because in her singular judgment the material was inappropriate? Was it the
local school board, or lack of basic common sense?
I say the
person who should be fired for "a lack of professionalism and impaired
judgment", as she herself put it, is the aforementioned Hinds
County Schools Superintendent Delesicia Martinis.
Oh, but
wait - we have a problem. Ms. Martinis, who appears to have taken down
her Linked-In profile in the last 6 hours, is African American and the fired
Mr. Price ... is not.
I can
only imagine the self-righteous anti-racist vigor we would provoke if we were
to apply common sense to this situation.
