The Worst Education Money Can Buy

Everyone who has ever studied it, everyone with early childhood teaching experience, will tell you that unstructured play is the developmentally appropriate way for young children to learn. The work of people like Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget proved this over a century ago, and nothing has happened since then to disprove the basic principles of the educational centrality of play.

Otherwise responsible, thoughtful people, however, from all corners of the political spectrum, today continue to push for more and more high stakes academic testing at younger and younger ages in the face of absolutely zero evidence to indicate that this approach can have any kind of positive outcome for kids. In fact, despite the mountain of evidence that this type of testing has negative effects on real learning and normal development in young children, half of US states now test kindergarteners, and others are planning to follow suit. If you listen to what they're saying you begin to understand the forces that are warping their best judgement, choosing not what is best for children, but what is best politically and economically (at least in the short term).

This week New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was the latest to jump on this crazy train bandwagon, coming out in favor of subjecting kindergarteners to standardized testing. According to Newsday:

The proposed new requirement . . . aims in part at helping the state win an estimated $100 million in grants offered by the Obama administration . . .

And Cuomo's spokesperson, puts it in even harsher economic terms:

"Investing in early learning programs could return as much as $7 for every dollar spent," . . . referring to possible savings in remedial education.

Cold economic rationale aside, what really jumps out at me is the phrase "remedial education." What? These are 5-year-olds. What kind of remedial education are they talking about? I suppose it's literacy and math, but what can they possibly be doing to determine that incoming kindergarteners need "remedial" anything? If they're talking about social skills, maybe I get it, but I'm confident this isn't what they're talking about. No, they are talking about continuing the dangerous trend of force-feeding very young children on a curriculum of math and literacy that is totally inappropriate for preschoolers.

One hope is that the state can use some of the money to establish quality ratings for such centers, which would serve as useful guides for parents.

And there you have it, the bottom line. We will now be putting pressure on even preschool teachers to start in on the drill-and-kill approach so favored by the corporate education reformers. Now even our 3 and 4-year-olds will be subjected to the dull tedium of a test-prep curriculum, the kind that has been steadily pushing history, social studies, civics, humanities, arts, PE, language, drama, music, dance, and science onto the fringes, if they are even taught at all any more. The kind of "education" that is about filling empty vessels instead of igniting flames. The kind of "education" that narrowly focuses on math and literacy, while killing off every spark of creativity. The kind of "education" in which thinking for oneself is a detriment, where test taking skills are the highest value. The kind of "education" designed to indoctrinate workers rather than produce citizens capable of taking full part in their own self-governance.

This is just another example of how money is perverting our democracy. This is the kind of indoctrination (it can hardly be called education) that large corporations want as they prepare for the low-wage, long-hour future that they predict for us. As the middle class continues to disappear, as social-mobility (at least upward social mobility) becomes the stuff of legend, and as the gap between haves and have nots widens, there becomes less and less need for actual citizens who might think too creatively, voice their own opinions too loudly, or otherwise object to calls of "austerity" from us and prosperity for them. That, like the Occupy Wall Street movement, would be bad for business. For the same reason, we will never get meaningful environmental legislation (despite poll after poll showing Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of it) because those paying for our politicians don't want it. For the same reason, we will never make any progress on social justice, poverty, health care, or infrastructure, all things the American people want. We will never get those things until we force corporate money out of politics and the only way I see that happening is public financing of elections. That way our political representatives can spend their days actually serving the people instead of dialing for dollars. This step won't by itself completely eliminate the corporate influence, but it will mean that those representatives who actually want to serve the people are freed up to do so, and those committed to serving corporate interests will no longer be able to hide.

Last night I was at Westlake Center as I have been almost every day for the past two weeks, where the Seattle branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement is holding its own. I knew I would run into my teenaged daughter and a few of her friends there, but I was both shocked and pleased at how many of them had come down to check things out. It was heartening. As we waited for the General Assembly to start, I started chatting with Mallory, a young middle school teacher from a well-regarded school who teaches "remedial" reading. I asked her about her students. Every one of them, as I could have predicted, either have parents who are illiterate, have learning disabilities, or come from homes where English is a second language. I asked, "Do you ever have students who don't fall into one of those categories?" She answered, "Never." In other words, we don't need tests to figure out which kids are at risk, which is what the kindergarten testing advocates claim they are for. Teachers already know who these kids are. If children don't fall into one of these categories, they will learn to read, standardized test or not. If logic prevailed, we would put our efforts into identifying these children early and help them, rather than instituting an entire regime of testing that warps the entire educational system and results in a strict and narrow educational experience for all.

I used to think that we were just dealing with misguided crusaders and dilettantes, well-intended folks striving to give back, but no longer. There are powerful, wealthy people who want our children to be less well-educated, more obedient, and less likely to question; they are looking to our schools to create a citizenry that is so hard at work keeping their heads above water that they don't have the time, or even the ability or knowledge, to speak for themselves. And now they are attempting to teach those nose-to-the-grindstone habits to our youngest citizens. I say no.

This is why I continue to stand with the 99 percent. 

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