Educational Readings
By Allan Alach
The strange world where politicians and associated deformers pursue
their agendas in seeming ignorance of the ever increasing objections of
educators and parents continues all over. The same complaints “Why don’t they listen?’
can be heard in many countries. The fact that this happens, and is ignored,
tells its own story.
As far as New Zealand is concerned, the government have pushed on with their plan to make each school’s national standards data available to all and sundry via a website.
The existing scheme of allowing
schools to submit ‘data’ in a wide range of formats has made it impossible to
collate the ‘data’ and this has spoiled the plan to produce league tables this
year. As I expected, the system is being tightened up next year, requiring
schools to enter ‘achievement data’ online, and further, also as I predicted,
the following year (2014) will see the introduction of a online assessment tool
that will rank children against national standards. Given the internationality
of GERM, it is not drawing too long a bow to suggest that this approach is
being trialled here, before being introduced elsewhere. The USA, with their
Common Core Standards, is not too many light years away from being ready to go.
Beware. This is another step to demote teacher professionalism and judgement -
the other end of the ‘computer as teacher’ approach.
I welcome suggested articles, so if you come across a gem, email it
to me at allan.alach@ihug.co.nz.
This week’s homework!
The
remarkable successes of the student strikers in Quebec
Lessons for us all from this? We can
overcome neo-liberalism!
Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From
U.S. K-12 Market
A couple of quotes from this article, which
is applicable to other countries as well:
"Think
about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public
schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge
number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way
behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit
vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will
be right there to provide it."
And
"Autism
in particular, he said, is a growth market, with school districts seeking
better, cheaper ways to serve the growing number of students struggling with
that disorder."
Lovely.
Open
the Flood Gates
Thoughtful posting by Walter McKenzie of
ASCD. Makes a very good case for the need to discard standardisation.
Noam
Chomsky - The Purpose of Education
Noam Chomsky discusses the purpose of
education, impact of technology, whether education should be perceived as a
cost or an investment and the value of standardised assessment. An antidote to
the madness spreading around the world.
Education
funnels and webs of learning
Steve Wheeler, from University of Plymouth,
UK, writes a very good blog “Learning with e’s” While predominantly commenting
on digital technologies in education, he also casts his eye over the wider
educational scene, and the purposes of education. In this article he references
visionaries such as Illich and Freire.
Let’s read them a story! Helping your children succeed
in school
OECD article that highlights the importance
of parents reading to children at home.
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