Response #5: Restructuring Our Education

In my past response I touched on an RSA Animation of Ken Robinson’s speech on “Changing Education Paradigms”. After this we were told to read this next article, and plug it into play with what we have already talked about.

Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital

I have already mentioned how industrial the education system is in America and how important standardized testing is to this system. Standardized testing can be imagined as the make or break factor for education. The scores students and a school makes on standardized testing determine how much money a school will receive in the next year, and together ranks county’s against other counties, and then on up from state to state.  Students also are individually pressured by these tests. The format is not unlike the ACT or SAT tests. They are barely rewarded for doing well, as a good score only tells the student what is next for them in this outdated system.

 As I have said, entire class curriculum's are based around the information of upcoming standardized tests. Students are learning things in such a programmed course that there isn’t much room for outside interest or lessons.  A class should interest the intelligent while having room for helping those that are having difficulty. Instead these classes are mostly just memorization, where only the students who are committed to getting good grades do well. This plan looks like it has been much in effect since 1910; “Scientific management and efficiency experts soon became the rage among corporate executives and public officials alike, quickly spreading to the administration of public schools, where standards, testing, and Taylorized schools became the defining principles for a new utopia: the corporate-model school system. Thus, efficiency expert Harrington Emerson gave a speech to the High School Teachers Association of New York City in 1911, which he entitled “Scientific Management and High School Efficiency.” The last seven of his twelve principles were: standard records, planning, standard conditions, standardized operations, standard instructions, standard schedules, and efficiency reward.” (from the linked article.)” To me, this leaves no room for educational freedom or creativity. With today’s huge amount of media that every young student consumes, from video games, TV and their cell phones amongst many other things, school has to seem awful boring.

I can see how this might have been a good system when it was created, our country was very different. But there is absolutely no excuse for this system to still be in use today. This system was used before media has come into full force for our culture; this system was created before TV or even before every home had electricity.  How can something so primitive still be in use for a society that is supposed to be advanced and cutting edge?

This system is putting a heavy burden on the teachers and the students. Teachers are forced to maintain a strictly timed curriculum that doesn’t leave much time for error, and if the students don’t learn it and aren’t open about not learning the material, they can easily be left behind. This is hypocritical also as I can one for vouch for having tons of free time throughout the year were students were left to do “work” on their own which usually left room for talking and horsing around with classmates. I wouldn’t know where to begin with fixing the system, I wouldn’t know what is wrong nationally, I just know what was wrong with my school. But that should be a place to start, state governments should be given more freedom to fix what is wrong locally first, and then we can come back as a nation together and work together to fix this failing system.