Education

I'm opposed to the incessant state and national mania surrounding standardized testing. On the whole, it's counterproductive, doesn't really measure education, leads to cheating (deliberate or otherwise), etc. But I fully understand the clamors for it.

People can't trust teachers any more. For instance, how is one to assess a school where the GPA for all students is 3.5 or higher? How can a whole dept have grades that average to 3.2? At some universities A- or B+ is the average course grade. C'mon, we've all seen the products of these schools and depts and they certainly don't merit grades like that. So, why, then, are such grades given? Hence, the need for standardized testing. Teachers and schools say one thing (in giving high grades) when the evidence points in the opposite direction. And, compounding this is the claim by teachers and administrators of demanding higher standards. Bologna/Baloney!

Britain has a national system, one that is highly resented by teachers and students alike. But it serves its purpose: it keeps educational programs/classes, etc. honest.

On the college/university level, and I suspect in the public schools as well, the number of administrators and other nonteaching employees has multiplied over the recent decades. The primary purpose of schools is no longer classroom learning, that is, education.

Far too many instructors at all levels have become enamored with technology. Technology, no doubt, has its place. But it has become a way to avoid real teaching. Oh, the justification is that today's students relate more to the visual, the video games (oops! did I mean to write that? yep.), but face-to-face academic confrontation, the stuff of learning, is lost.

Yet, many US colleges and universities remain the standards for the rest of the world to envy and try to emulate. I guess a good question is why other colleges and universities and even public schools don't try to emulate (and adapt, obviously, for age/grade/level differences) the teaching at these top schools. (See my earlier post on the Socratic method for one possible explanation why they don't.) It's almost as if we design our schools with the lowest common denominators in mind, setting up students for the most mediocre of educations.

But, who will listen? The education-types will bring out all kinds of studies, some flawed, some deliberately misleading, some with results all too predictable because of current methods to justify the latest trendy fashion in education. But how many have actually tried what worked in the past, what works at the best colleges and universities? Has anyone tried hard work, with lots of reading and writing? Has anyone tried really high standards? If so, they are in the minority.