My Homework

 Since I'm writing so much for the course I'm taking, this blog is being neglected. It's not like I'm not writing, I'm just not blogging. But then I thought about my purposes for this blog and one of the largest is for me to read it in future and remind myself of what I was doing and thinking about at this time. So I chose one of the six things I wrote this week and will use it as a blog post. This'll be different, but see if you like it...

                                       Three Unanswered Questions in Eisner's Article

The first unanswered question in Elliot Eisner’s article entitled “What Does it Mean to Say a School is Doing Well?” is the title. School efficacy is something elusive and exceedingly difficult to quantify in any consistent way and that, I think, is the point of the paper. One unanswered question I wanted Eisner to ask was “Is this such a bad thing?” I don’t think it is and as you will see from the three unanswered questions from the article I have chosen, I think Eisner is fine with abandoning attempts at standardizing and quantifying school efficacy and leaving the titular question an unanswered one as well.

Unanswered question 1: Are test scores the best criteria to reward professional educator performance (Eisner, 2001)? More specifically, are standardized test scores valid proxies for education quality and how authentic are our criteria for judging educational success? The answer to that should be abundantly clear by now. Payments and penalties for performance based on test scores create unhealthy high-stakes competition all the way up to international levels and this, Eisner states, is likening schools to businesses and the business world in which the strong survive and the weak go out of business (Eisner, 2001). I say the competition is “unhealthy” because, like in the business world, it leads to things like cheating, (by teachers as well as students) (Eisner, 2001) longer school days, higher stress on students particularly in areas of highest competition which are mostly in Asia, and even student suicide (Zeng & Le Tendre, 1998). It also creates a focus on core subjects like math and science, undermining important subjects like the arts (Eisner, 2001).

Unanswered question number 2: Eisner wrote that regarding test scores as valid proxies for education quality has given the U.S. three feckless education revolutions in the past 20 years, are we going to have another (Eisner, 2001)? About a year later, starting in 2002, that question was answered with the No Child Left Behind Act, which was more of the same fecklessness. While surveying the wreckage after its effects, Alfie Kohn wrote, “Talented teachers have abandoned the profession after having been turned into glorified test prep technicians. Low-income teenagers have been forced out of school by do-or-die graduation exams. Countless inventive learning activities have been eliminated in favor of prefabricated lessons pegged to numbingly specific state standards” (Kohn, 2011).

Unanswered question number 3: What is the intellectual significance of the ideas that youngsters encounter (Eisner, 2001)? Kids are naturally endowed with curiosity. Way back in 1938, John Dewey asked a rather Biblical question about education, “What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win the ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul” (Wolk, 2008)? How is that for an unanswered question? If long school hours, high-stakes testing, and turning education into a competitive sport sacrifices the learning spirit, the natural curiosity of the child, is it worth it? The answer is obvious, but what may not be so well known is that this self-defeating educational style is not as old as we might think. 

Dr. Peter Gray wrote about a place called Sudbury Valley School where for 40 years children had been educating themselves in a setting opposite to what we erroneously consider to be “traditional” schooling (Gray, 2008). Kids there became educated through their own play and exploration just as self-directed play and exploration for millennia before had led to effective adults in hunter-gatherer cultures (Gray, 2008). Long ago, there was little distinction between work and play for kids. What ended this? People settled down and began accumulating property (Gray, 2008). Farming required long hours and repetitive work a lot like factories in the industrial revolution. Kids were “educated” from that time on to work long hours doing boring learning and doing as they were told. Suddenly, childhood was not fun anymore. The joy was removed from schools along with a great deal of the healthy wonder and fascination with explorative learning. This is what Eisner describes as “inquiry” a large part of intellect that is not measured in standardized tests (Eisner, 2001) and both Eisner and I believe we are doing our children and our world a massive disservice by suppressing it.

There may, however, be good news in the form of yet another educational revolution, but this one might be different. With the rapid onset of automation, kids no longer need to be groomed in schools as apprentice factory workers, office workers, or participants in the long hours of drudgery a lot of jobs require. It won’t be long until machines can do all of that. Ironically, it will be uniquely human skills, many of which education has suppressed for decades, that will be most highly prized in industry, along with, of course, tech savvy. At long last, the progressiveness that progressive educators have longed to implement may be allowed to progress  (Brady, 2018).     

                                                                    References

Brady, W. (2018). What would John Dewey do about automation? Action Commentary. Retrieved June 20, 2022, from https://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2018/01/31/what-would-john-dewey-do-about-automation

Eisner, E. W. (2001). What does it mean to say a school is doing well? Phi delta kappan, 82(5). Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://doi.org/https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/1588978/mod_book/chapter/348972/Eisner%20What_Does_It_Mean_To_Say_a_Sch.pdf

Gray, P. (2008). A brief history of education. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/200808/brief-history-education

Kohn, A. (2011). Feel bad education and other contrarian essays on children and schooling. Beacon Press.

Wolk, S. (2008). The positive classroom. Educational Leadership, 66(1), 8–15. Retrieved June 17, 2022, from https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/joy-in-school

Zeng, K., & Le Tendre, G. (1998). Adolescent suicide and academic competition in East Asia. Comparative education review, 42(4). Retrieved June 20, 2022, from https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/447526