By Tom Dodge, KERA 90.1 Commetator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-511857.mp3
Dallas, TX –
I don't believe the TAKS test will raise America's educational standing among the other countries of the world. A lack of accountability is not at fault. The problem is that America has lost its reverence for learning. American children can learn as well as the children of any other country. They learn very easily the things our country emphasizes. In addition to sports and celebrity iconography, they easily learn the rituals of nationalism, for example, because soldiers are known as heroes today. They are generally exalted at home and in school and therefore appealing to youth.
So they all memorize the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, some even in kindergarten. But they do not ordinarily learn, even in college, the Bill of Rights, lines of poetry from the hands of our greatest poets, and they do not learn the Beatitudes from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
They all know the Pledge but can they list the planets of our solar community and pinpoint their earthly place among them? Do they know the Fibbonacci Sequence and how it applies to them? Do they learn where they fit into the geologic time periods? (They're easily memorized, using the first letter in each word of the sentence, "Come On Sally And Drive My Pretty Porsche." I can still do it after all these years: Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian. A group in Midland, "Texas Citizens for Science" hopes to install "Earth Science" in the public school curriculum. Good luck.
Because of Mother Media's ubiquity, children become entangled in the tentacles of the rapacious corporate octopus, its eight tentacles representing stardom, sports, fashion, weaponry, popular music, liquor, cigarettes, and sex. It's true that Jack must play so as not to be a dull boy but all play makes Jack insufferable. His obsession with these ideals consumes him. Much of his schoolwork doesn't appeal to him because he can't see himself reflected in it as he does in the corporate tentacles. But what is it about the tentacles that so captivate his attention?
Jack values them because they're all about his dreams, loves, problems, in short, his life.
We're all alike in this way. Since our favorite subject is always ourselves, schools should appropriate the technique of Mother Media's corporate octopus and teach students to see themselves reflected in their school subjects. Note their interest, for example, in books in which their hometown, school, or neighborhood plays a large part. As our eyes rush to our own image in a group photograph, so we also enjoy seeing ourselves reflected in what we read. The truth is, students can always see themselves reflected in art, even in math, science, history, and the rest. They need only to be taught how to do it.
Most teachers understand these principles but due to large classes, bureaucratic constraints, and strict administrative controls they are generally powerless to use innovative methods. They know that the assembly line method of the factory system is the anathema of education but have little leeway to institute new and individualized approaches to learning. It takes extra time and energy to get to know the children one by one and pinpoint their talents and interests. And, as we know, they are constrained from doing so by the dread TAKS test. In other words, they're over-TAKSed.
Tom Dodge is a writer from Midlothian.
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