Horace Mann and the Transcendentalists: A Thought

Horace Mann's Tenth Annual Report contains one of the most passionate and well-reasoned arguments in defense of the public schools ever written. The core of the report deals with one of the most difficult arguments in public education: the level of responsibility people have to fund the school, even if they are not currently benefitting from the services it provides. Mann's central assumption is that no one person can own the land because it is the naturally inherited gift of all men, an idea firmly rooted in the philosophy of the Transcendentalists. Mann's premises in the Tenth Annual Report are heavily indebted to the philosophies of the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, especially Emerson's ideas of the universal spirit that unites all men and the location of that universal spirit in nature.

In the Tenth Annual Report, Mann takes on the task of convincing people who have no connection to the common school system to pay the taxes that finance their daily operations. In Mann's day, those who wanted to, and were able to, educate their children sent them to private school. These upper-class and middle-class elites saw no need to finance a school system for the lesser members of society; after all, what could their simple minds hope to learn? Mann's argument had to circumvent this bias in order to win the support of these wealthy people. Mann decided that his best option would be to redefine the notion of ownership. Only with Emerson's philosophy as an inspiration could Mann take the common notion of what property was and relocate it to the "capacious storehouses of nature" (Mann, 1957, p. 64) to which all men have access. Mann, taking from Emerson's philosophy, uses the notion that "none of them owns the landscape" (Emerson, 2007, p. 18) to reinforce the idea that there are higher moral callings that require those very wealthy people to survive. There is no better place than in the natural landscape, "the woods, [where] we return to reason and faith," (Emerson, 2007, p. 18) to be the place where the rights and possessions of all men are safely stored; conversely, there is no better place for them to be shared.

Mann used this idea, that all people are connected through the natural, and spiritual, landscape, to justify the use of community property for universal education. Mann explicitly states that:

I believe in the existence of a great, immutable principle of natural law, or natural ethics…which proves the absolute right of every human being that comes into the world to an education; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of that education are provided for all.

(Mann, 1957, p. 63)

This premise is directly translatable from Emerson's ideas on the divinity of nature. Mann even places the power to ensure the right of every child to an education into the hands of "the will of God" (Mann, 1957, p. 63). There is a direct link between the right of man to live and be educated and the universality of the property people can own while they are alive; both of these rights, the right to property and education, are provided by reallocation of capital from the "capacious storehouses of nature" (Mann, 1957, p. 64). Directly after he establishes his belief in the natural ethics of education, Mann states that "nature ordains a perpetual entail" (Mann, 1846, p. 65) between all the successive generations on earth. The riches of the natural world are available to "no one man, nor any one generation" (Mann, 1957, p. 65), but to all people who live in the world. Nature is a universal right, education is a universal right, and God finds a way to provide both equally to all. No member of the elite families of 1846 Massachusetts would want to betray their "PILGRIM FATHERS" (Mann, 1957, p. 60) by not performing their divinely-charged duties on earth.

Mann returns to the natural world to illustrate the nature of natural ownership. According to Mann, those who live upstream from their neighbors have no right to mistreat the spring because it belongs to those who live downstream. Ownership constantly moves, shifting down and down and down until the stream reaches the sea. To complete Mann's metaphor, the stream will again belong to the man at the source since the water will be caught up to the clouds as rain and then poured out to replenish it. Mann then sets up a conceit between the natural property people think they own and the knowledge provided in school. Mann demonstrates that the knowledge of generation A must be respected by the subsequent generation; consequently, generation B does not own the information any more than generation C, the beneficiary of generation B, can claim ownership over the improvements they will make for generation D. The knowledge is constantly recycled, constantly brought back to its source, to be replenished and rejuvenated.

The knowledge of the previous generations, being a part of the property that all men have a right to possess, is the basis of the existence of the common school. Mann rails against ignorance because it only serves to stifle the community's ability to innovate. Mann believes in what Emerson said in his American Scholar
Address: "the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better" (Emerson, 2007, p. 82). Mann and Emerson realized the potential for innovation this country possessed and focused on what it could and would give to the world. Emerson wished that "our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, [would draw] to a close" (Emerson, 2007, p. 83) and that this nation based on the protection of natural rights could provide a superior form of education for its people. Mann was able to open the door to the school system that is now the right of every American citizen because of the Transcendentalist belief in the natural, divine right to an education.

Diversity as a Dirty Word

I don't think I am the only one who noticed this today, but the students (and even the adults) were acting (and I can think of no other word for it) pissy with each other today.

From the moment the news came out that Obama had sealed the win, every single newscaster in the internet broadcasting world was making comments along the lines of "...and to think, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot almost 40 years ago," or "Look, here we hae a shot of Jesse Jackson crying," or "I think we all have to acknowledge that we are all a little racist and that we hate that which we don't understand."  The hit parade went on.

Here is my beef.  (Yes, I said beef.  Yes, I teach high school English.  Yes, to students.)  I don't believe that our extreme focus on diversity is as beneficial as the people who sell us in-services wish us to believe it is.  America is a country based on arguing your point to the best of your ability and hoping that the majority of people believe you.  President Elect Obama certainly argued, but what did he argue for exactly?  I would love to have been a fly on the wall when he was listening to the post victory interviews from major news sources of people celebrating because they will be able to "afford a car and stop worrying about my mortgage."  I tried to pay semi-close attention to the candidates platforms, but I missed the "get a car and a mortgage on the government's dime" platform.  I mean, who wouldn't vote for that.

So what is the significance of Obama's election?  Socialized medicine?  A car in every garage?  A garage for every car?  A house for every garage?  I am truly excited that we have breached an important moment in American history; I am even more thrilled for the young black men I teach who were wearing their Obama t-shirts today and making comments along the lines of "maybe I can, too."  That sense of pride in own's own racial/ethnic heritage is not something taught in the schools, nor should it be.  The school has no business pushing that agenda; however, there is a difference between agenda pushing and tolerance.

There is no better model for teaching tolerance than a teacher who is tolerant of any and all people when he or she needs to be.  I remember the first time I called a student out this year.  He was black.  he was also standing on his chair and swiveling his hips like he had a hula hoop on his waist.  Not to mention, the bell was about to ring for lunch.  I called him on his idiotic behavior and another girl who had no business saying anything at all immediately said, "It's because he's black isn't it?"  Without much fanfare I replied that "stupid actions are color-blind and that if any other student regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or national greed wanted to dance like a fool on his or her chair, he or she would be in trouble, too."  This answer seemed to pacify the girl, but why did I have to give it?

We have lost sight of the idea of "oneness" in our schools and we will not get back to the place where it could have been a realistic goal.  The fact that we must incessantly point out our differences divides us rather than unites us.  Other countries, mostly England, have begun pulling curricula that offend racial and ethnic groups (i.e. Slavery and the Holocaust) because they would rather just sit on it than acknowledge the truth of it.  Montgomery County, Maryland banned To Kill a Mockingbird because it contains everyone's favorite "n" word.  I forgot that sudden curricular amnesia leads to an erasure of historical events.  This type of diversity awareness for "oneness" is a poisonous cancer on the soul of our schools and will only serve to divide us further.

So, what can we do?  Where shall we direct our attempts at diversity?  I am in the middle of a unit on the novel A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.  It is a novel about a schoolteacher named Grant Wiggins who lives and works in the former slave quarter in a Louisiana parish in the 1940s.  An uneducated young black man is wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to die.  In his trial, the defense attorney (yes, you read that right - defense attorney) tries to save his life by convincing the jury that he is a "hog," and hogs aren't even worth electrocuting.  Grant's dilemma, his imposed mission, is to travel to the jail and, in separate visits, teach the young boy, aptly named Jefferson, how to be a man.  Jefferson's godmother, a good friend of Grant's Tante Lou, does not want to send her godson to the chair as a hog; rather, she wants him to go to the chair as a man.  Short order.

Grant's dilemma is compounded by the fact that the local white boys don't like his education.  The white boys believe that Grant is somehow trying to intimidate them with his university learning.  Grant, to the contrary, just wants to get out of this town; he doesn't believe that whites and blacks can ever be equal.  Eventually, he learns that there is more to educating a boy into a man than being a grown person who teaches school.  As Jefferson goes to die, he shows his manhood in keeping his head high and meeting the eyes of every man he sees as he walks to the chair.  So what happened?  How did Grant teach this uneducated young black boy to be a man?

He taught him the basic ideals all people hold dear.  Grant showed Jefferson self-respect, respect for others, courage, faith, and most of all love.  The thing is Grant does not teach these consciously; rather, he models them in the way he lives his life.  Maybe the best way to teach students how to be tolerant and how to appreciate one another is to stop vieiwing them as a whole based on their demographic parts.  Maybe I should focus instead on the number of students failing my class as opposed to the number of black/white/yellow/one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple-people eater students who are failing my class.  The fact that a student is black does not lessen or intensify the severity of an "F" in a class.  My understanding of how that students home works also plays no part in whether or not that student can write and communicate in "standard English."  (And yes, there is an understood standard English despite what some ed theorists might say.  They aren't out looking for jobs with 3rd grade level literacy skills.)

The point is we have boxed ourselves into worshipping a false god, an idol to which we have pinned our hopes for a more peaceful tomorrow.  The unfortunate truth is (and yes, I wrote the "t" word) like most false gods, this god of diversity for diversity's sake will fail to accomplish its mission.  Race will become the great divide, divorcing American white from American black from American yellow; and all the while, someone will be in a meeting room somewhere telling us how to be tolerant and loving because they know better than we do that, in our heart of hearts, we are all bigots.

Schools should not educate for "oneness."  That is not their business.  They can host dialogues, can be places for the exchanging of ideas, but they may not indoctrinate students into a cult of tolerance that only drives them further apart.

"Owning" Their Learning

From Jonathan Kozol's The Shame of the Nation, p.96:

"Learning itself…is now defined increasingly not as a process or preoccupation that holds satisfaction of its own in propreitary terms. "Taking ownership" is the accepted term…children are encouraged to believe they "own" the book, the concept, the idea. They don't engage with knowledge; they possess it."

Every teacher has had that explosive epiphanic moment when a great concept dawns fresh in his or her mind, allowing each one of us to glance at the truth of human existence; from our most poetic literature to our most elegant mathematics, we seek to understand our world and discover a bit of Truth in our short, yet important, existence. What fools are we who allowed ourselves to forget that no one person can own that truth. From the most experienced professor to the most down-trodden of poor and homeless, we have no claim to the common Truth that binds us. We seek instead to kill, to steal, to swindle, and to shop our way to a counterfeit feeling of purpose that leaves the pit of our souls seeking more. How dare we, we teachers who are meant to guide our students in a quest for Truth, pretend that anyone can own any part of our great human Truth, our great lives.

Anymore, we acknowledge the Truth with our lips, and then betray it in the face of real need, love, and understanding: the children and teens of tomorrow's world. These young trustees, for they are as entrusted to us as they attempt to place trust in us, expect a world of market-readiness in school. The truth is that not all subjects supply "McKnowledge" on a sesame seed bun; they shouldn't and they have no business trying.

Find the business application of Coltrane, seek the bottom line in Orff, delve for the cold equations of life in Proust--I am an English teacher and I'm still seeking my slice of Truth in Proust--these things simply do not exist in parcel form within these great human works. They will not and they cannot exist in the humanities. The humanities exist as a counterpoint to the almost deific experience of finding natural truth in a science lab or abstract truth in an imaginary number. When Roman emperors would ride into Rome victorious, they used to have slaves that would stand next to them in their chariots and whisper into their ears one phrase over-and-over again: "You're only human." The humanities, and forgive my subservient metaphor, are the slave to the mathematics and sciences in our schools and in our worlds. Where science may think it has found truth, literature finds a way to remind it of the humans that helped it discover that truth. Where mathematicians find golden ratios and numerical patterns in the natural world, musicians apply them to the notes that please and inspire us. The sciences and mathematics may deal in more tangible truths, but only the humanities can interpret their worth; they are both necessary in the "educated" person's life, the yin and yang of our schooling. Science and math are important, but they are only human inventions, not the keys to apotheosis.

Trump and his millions be damned, but there is more satisfaction in the sublime realization of glanced-at truth than in all the dollars I've ever earned or spent; yet, we tell our trustees, our charges who place their intellectual faith is us, that the bottom line matters and the larger Truths are irrelevant. For this sin may we all be punished. We have failed as teachers and as people in our enduring and rewarding task: awakening our students to the beauty of every human life so that they may see, engage in, and learn from the Truth.

In the Purgatorio of Dante, Dante's pilgrim is branded with seven P's by the angel who guards the gate of purgatory. The angel says to the pilgrim "When thou art within, see thou wash away these wounds." As he climbs each of the levels of Mount Purgatory, an angel confronts the pilgrim before he passes to the next consecutive level. The angel wipes away one of the P's as he speaks the beatitude that cures the particular sin of that level (e.g., pride's opposite is the beatitude "Blessed are the poor in spirit" or the humble). School is the purgatory of life. Our students come to us and we are supposed to give them the knowledge not just to live, but to live good lives. I have no space here for a discussion of moral definitions or religious apologetics, but I find it interesting that a lot of what we say is "wrong" in our hearts and minds seems to match up across the board (at least when it seems to really matter). The point is that unless we present humanity at its weakest and at its strongest, we are letting a golden opportunity slip through our fingers. We are playing at becoming Satan, directing students to consume the fruit of knowledge without showing them its proper and improper uses, without showing them how to make critical judgments. We show them the sin and we show them the beatitude and then we tell them that both have equal value. This is our sin an our lie.

We don't own knowledge. We don't own Truth. We do occasionally get a privileged glance at it. We want our students to come to the Truth as it can be seen, to engage with it, and to have it leave its mark on them; however, most of all, we want them to leave their indelible mark upon it. We wonder why our students misbehave: they know what we are cheating them out of, holding out in front of them. We are dangling the ability to interpret and appreciate Truth in front of them like a carrot before an ass. I wouldn't like the metaphor either.

Class and Class

I am beginning a new school year tomorrow and I am already tired of one, constantly misrepresented idea: race and learning.

Now, to avoid any type of 1940s eugenics talk, I do not mean to say that any particular race is better in school than others. Rather, I mean quite the opposite; black, white, red, green, yellow, one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple-people eaters, external characteristics have absolutely zero to do with learning.

What does have an effect on learning is socioeconomic status. The oldest and most pervasive division in American society is partially to blame for student achievement gaps. There it is. No, 3 of 5 black children do "x" or 4 of 10 Hispanic children do "y."

Why does class matter so much? Resources. Those who "have," even just a little above poverty, are apt to be found buying toys, books, etc. for their children before they enter kindergarten. Parents in low-income households cannot afford to purchase these tools for their children; thus, these students usually arrive ill prepared for kindergarten and the tasks they must accomplish. Studies show that an initial lack of specific background knowledge only becomes a larger and larger lack as the years pass (Hirsch 2006).

So, why the focus on race? Schools are skewed that way. In the annual report The Condition of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics shows that "Nationally, larger percentages of Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaska Native students attended high-poverty schools than did White or Asian/Pacific Islander students in 2005–06, and higher percentages of Asian/Pacific Islander than White students attended these schools" (2008). The larger percentage of minority students in poorer schools masks that most of the poor people in the U.S. are in fact white (27,196,646 of 47,190,246 who are eligible for free or reduced lunch programs are white). Thus, when education specialists study who performs at a lower level in school, a slant toward the minority students becomes evident because they tend to be in higher supply at poorer schools.

How can we fix this problem? With a small hit to our tightening wallets, we could fix this problem easily. How? Public preschool for those who require it. But, I paid for my kid to go to preschool, why should I pay for that kid? In a democratic society, we wish to have an educated and well-informed electorate to avoid walking into the political traps set for us by our illustrious "leaders." (The parentheses are intended to convey the tenuousness of placing this term on any current politician, including our messianic 2008 presidential candidates.) More importantly, in a democratic society public education should be equal for all students, not just those born into families with enough money to buy Baby Einstein products.

But I don't want the government to create standards for preschool; that is supposed to be a time of discovery. I agree; preschool should be a less regulated and defined area of public schooling. Unfortunately, taxpayers need to know that their dollars are working as they are intended to, not as they should be working. Unless we can convince people to wait and see the increase in later state assessments, preschool would need its own standards an assessments. We once again run into the barrier most policy plans are wrecked upon, that of the public and the political.

What are we willing to pay to increase the effectiveness of our schools? Are we willing to pay at all? What effect would it have? All I can say to these questions is that the French have done a number of studies of their own public preschool programs and the results seem to be beneficial. Until we place these public preschools within our own system, we will never really know how well it does or does not work; however, if these programs did become reality, would anyone use them? That, after all, is the most important question.

The Logic of Reforms

Teachers have a love/hate relationship with a lot of things in their professional world. Many teachers love their students; however, they will occasionally wish to follow one student to the bathroom and give him or her the mother of all swirlies (I wonder if this is the plural of this word or not). Many teachers mumble discouraging words about their administrators, sometimes to their faces in something not quite like a mumble at all; however, when a teacher is backed against a wall, he or she usually finds him or herself wishing for a competent and fair administrator to get his or her back. Many teachers dislike parents. This statement requires no qualification.

Despite all this simultaneous loving and hating, there is one thing above all others that drives many teachers insane: educational policy. This creature drives educators in sane for any of the following reasons:

Policies never ask, they tell.
Policies are never invited. They simply waltz in one day, put their feet up and refuse to leave until some vague goal is attained, then it is forgotten and not praised.
Policies are never created by teachers. They may be created by former teachers, but I have had enough friends go through the administrative path and come out the other side clueless about what goes on in a classroom. Policies are created, more often than not, by businessmen, policy elites, or plain old policy makers from Capital Hill. Teachers are rarely, if ever, consulted.
Policies have a horrible habit of blowing up and destroying the person closest to them. Whenever an educational policy goes wrong, it is always the teachers fault, never the policy's. In this way, refer back to the love/hate between teachers and parents. A child never does any wrong in the parents' eyes; a policy doesn't in its creators' eyes.

So, what is to be done? How can teachers fight, understand, or even just survive the policy wars that have plagued education since this nation was declared "at risk?" How can teachers work with good policies while discriminating against those that only seem to work to the detriment of our students? Before we answer this question, let's consider some responses teachers have used in the past:

Ignore it.
Ignore it quietly.
Keep your head down and meet the bare minimum of requirements.
Vocally speak out, lose your job, and work for a "nonprofit" while pretending like teachers who still have jobs in public schools are some form of troglodytic subhumans.

None of these are particularly constructive. So what then? The answer lies in Larry Cuban's analyses from his book The Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why schools can't be businesses. I highly recommend the book to anyone who has ever wondered why bottom-line minded, sycophantic profiteers have any business dictating to schools (almost inherently nonprofit organizations) about how to do their jobs. Beside that, Cuban provides a very readable and concise method of dissecting policy, particularly educational policy, in the first chapter so that the reader may follow along with his critical dissection of the business-based reforms of the past, roughly, 20 years.

Cuban's method of dissection does take a couple things for granted. First, he takes for granted that educational policies are some of the most value-laden and ideological policies in existence. Second, that the most prominent piece of ideological wisdom about schools is "GOOD SCHOOLS = STRONG ECONOMY AND STRONG NATION" (Cuban, 2004, 17). There is nothing wrong with this tiny tidbit except the fact that good schools can exist without anyone wishing to take part in them. There must be a force drive students to attend, achieve, and succeed through the 12th grade. This "achievement ideology" has been called into questions before by many sociologists and pop culture journalists (most famously in the book Ain't No Makin' It by Jay MacLeod). The ideology itself is firmly entrenched in our collective American consciousness in the form of motivational posters, banners, and assemblies from our own school days, so the assumption seems to be fair. Beside these personal recollections, evidence points to the assumption of school as economy builder is abundant:

"in opinion polls, which reveal that parents assign high importance to staying in school, as well as in the dramatic rise over the past century of the percentage of students going to postsecondary institutions. It is also indicated by the business endorsement of the federal No Child Left Behind law (2002), which calls for higher academic standards, testing, and distinct accountability as ways of making schools more productive" (Cuban, 2004, 18).

Keeping these two assumptions in mind, Cuban points out how policies came to be created using what is referred to as a "Theory of Action," which contain the following:

The nature of the problem to be solved;
The strategies to be used in solving the problem;
And, the criteria by which to judge success (18).

This theory is tweaked numerous times after it is initially laid out as it makes its way to becoming policy. When the theory is tweaked, tinkered around with, it changes and becomes the logic of the reform. Cuban puts it best when he says that the theory of action begins as "political doctrine" and becomes "political compromise" (18).

When a policy is finally passed and enacted, informed and savvy educators can usually parse the logic of the reform after a couple of cursory readings. The logic of a policy is simply the crystallized statement of "the ideas and beliefs behind a policy" (18). These are often not difficult to pull out; however, many educators do not do this time-consuming task. After all, we have papers to grade, parents to call, field trips to plan, etc. Who has time to sit down and read policy. Decidedly, there is not much time to devote to this pursuit, but Cuban still tries to instill in us the importance of examining policies. He says:

"The assumptions driving the policies officials choose, and the short- and long-term outcomes they seek, deserve close public scrutiny because human costs and benefits accompany those policies put into practice" (19).

So, the way ahead seems clear. In this policy-driven age, we must get to the heart of a policy and try and parse out its underlying ideas and beliefs to truly assess whether or not the policy is worth using. For teachers, a policy is most worth using when it is adaptable, when it can be molded to current classroom objectives. With that in mind, perhaps we should take a cursory look at NCLB (2002).

Before I start this, I just wish to point out that Cuban's analysis of just business-related reform stretches to 244 pages. No one wants to read a blog entry that long. I will focus on a couple brief observations about the law.

The No Child Left Behind Act is simply the most recent incarnation of the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act of 1965. This law was created during a governmental era known as the Great Society. Johnson wanted to better American society; in particular, he wanted to destroy poverty. A noble goal, but a slightly difficult one. For this reason, the section known as "Title I" deals with providing funds for disadvantaged students. This feature of the bill has been its saving grace since its inception. People will never let a bill die if it provides money to their communities.

What we want to look at, though, is right beneath the heading "An Act." The words read as follows: "To close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind." No one would argue this goal; at least I hope not. The problems come in when we ask what the following things mean exactly: "the achievement gap," "accountability," "flexibility," and "choice." We can even go so far as to ask what "left behind" means; however, the point is not definitions, but intent. What is the intent of this bill? The intent seems to me to be to create a more accessible society for all people living within it. What's wrong with that? Nothing.

We too often let the stupidity of some lawmakers (like the guy who suggested 100 percent as a statistical goal for children not being left behind despite the fact that 100 percent is a statiscial impossibility) cloud the usefulness of a bill. Most teachers I know do not teach for the kickin' benefits, the kings ransom of a salary, or the gratitude of an adoring public. Those waiting for said rewards might as well stop now. Most teachers I know teach because they love doing something for the communities in which they live. That is why teachers exist in such a love/hate world: they love what they do because they do what they love, and then some political bugger comes and makes the thing we love the albatross around our necks with unrealistic and outlandish requests.

There is not a teacher alive who wouldn't have back an act to help all children succeed; however, they might have liked having a hand in it. Until teachers begin taking a more active role in the investigation and dissection of policy, they will never be allowed to help implement it. If teachers cannot work on implementing policy, they will never be allowed to create it. We are fighting a long-standing bias that says we are not smart enough, or savvy enough, to navigate the complicated waters of policy making. Until we prove that we are up to the task, we will continue to be trapped in cycles of love and hate while the students we have been entrusted with are bombarded by policy shift after policy shift, for better or for worse.

Teaching to the Test

Here is a scenario.

Johnny wakes up everyday of the school year, attends, does well on the tests, and is ready for the big end-of-course assessment.

OK.

He has learned a coherent, specifically outlined curriculum from day one. Now the state wants to make sure that Johnny really did learn that curriculum.

OK.

The state uses a test to assess whether or not Johnny accomplished the objectives set for him by the coherent curriculum.

OK.

Where is the problem in this?

Teaching to the test is one of the largest, and most readily accepted, of teacher myths. Of course we teach to a test; we are taught to design our own assessments and then create lessons leading up to them. If this is not teaching to the test, what is? The derrogatory tone of teaching to the test comes from some vague corner of Educationland where some disgruntled educator, whose kids didn't pass the test, tried to claim having "an open mind" or some such as a reason to guide his or her incoherent presentation of test material.

If we look at education as the process of exposing the connections between pieces of knowledge, teaching is helping to guide students in the discovery of these connections. Some claim that if we teach to the test, then we are isolating information and burying these connections. Yet, this assessment of teaching to the test overlooks an obvious point. In teaching the isolated subject, you as the teacher still have the personal agency to demonstrate the connections. No one is in the room making you teach practice questions off of a state assessment. This so-called remediation is self-imposed. If we had more faith in our ability to teach, we would not need such ham-fisted approaches to review.

What people need to be investigating, instead of teaching to the test, is the concept of what a test should be testing. Most tests from the state are mimics of long-standing tests like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS). The ITBS tests basic comprehension skills learned in elementary and middle school. Why, then, is the test for Earth Science Content structured in the EXACT same way? Perhaps the test designers forgot what their job was; they need to create an assessment that aligns itself with the curriculum it is testing. Instead, we have basic literacy test skills that focus on Earth Science, Algebra, or World History. These tests need to be redesigned in a bad way. Don't believe me, just go to your local school and ask to see a practice SOL test. I bet you will find a test full of comprehension passages and basic math problems designed to test skills, not content.

On top of this poor design, the curriculum sponsored by the state of Virginia is also incredibly vague. Take this English 11 SOL (by the way, English 11 is the only year an English test is given, so it should be on content from three years of English Literature and Writing):

11.3 The student will read and analyze relationships among American literature, history, and culture.

Really, is that all? For those of you keeping track, here is what the standard expects students to know about American literature:

1. How American literature has evolved since 1492 (or before if you include American Indians)?
2. How does one period of literature build upon the foundation laid by the one before it? (Yeah, that is an easy question.)
3. What was happening in America while Americans were writing literature? (Again, this is as broad as Mother Hubbard's rear-end.)
4. What is the culture of American Literature? (Now this is just getting silly.)

Here are some additional thoughts on the standard. I though I would ask these if I was, say, and English 11 teacher:
1. What are the most important pieces of literature written in America? This way I know where to target my lessons.
2. Is American literature of United States of American Literature or do authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and any Canadian author you can think of (I was educated in the U.S.) fit the bill for being "American?"
3. Is this standard seriously setting a goal of thoroughly analyzing 516 years of literature written since Europeans "found" this continent in one year?

Now we see the root of the problem. The tests are poorly designed because the curriculum is a vague and incoherent collection of demi-goals. Maybe if the English teachers in the state of Virginia had some say in the matter, there could be a "canon" of works to study in English 11 set aside for the teachers of those students. Perhaps then, if the test writers knew that everyone was learning the same thing and what that same thing was, a test could be written that would truly assess the content presented in the course. If the teacher of the course was worth his or her salt, then the material (taught in his or her personal style, whatever that may be) would be learned and explored well enough to pass this test. Did the teacher have to berate the students with practice questions? No. He or she taught to the test by teaching the curriculum. But don't forget, most people would have you believe that teaching to the test is simple, isolated cause of "evil" in our schools. Perhaps they just didn't peel back the layers of the onion well enough to see that there is a lot more to this issue than meets the eye.

When Johnny goes in for his World History test, he is going to have a nasty surprise waiting for him in the form of a general skills test seeking content knowledge. Let's hope his teacher taught to the test; maybe then Johnny can beat the design. I, on the other hand, think Johnny deserves better than that, don't you?

Nel Noddings and the Ethics of Care

Ok, follow me here.

Nel Noddings, author of one of the most complete educational theories of any American author, has come up with the solution to values education in America today.

Her values education model is based upon four pillars:

1. Modeling: doing what you say you are doing; showing other how to care.
2. Dialogue: talking and listening; this is the most important component of Noddings's view of values education because it makes the teacher model how to be cared for.
3. Practice: actually trying to do what you have learned from modeling; in the case of the modeler, this is when you care for others without being watched.
4. Confirmation: here is the problem. We have to be willing to confirm every child's own construction of his or her ethical ideal.

Are we willing to let a child grow up with an ethical construct that exists outside a societal norm? There are times when this can be positive; think about the white kids who grew up in the south of the early 20th century and decided that racism was immoral. What if the ethics students construct do not help people live together? What if a student decides instead of loving all people, he or she wants to kill all those who oppose him or her because he or she is obviously the only one who is right? It seems to me that there must be a line drawn, but how can we draw a line with Noddings's model?

The answer she gives still works within her framework. The ultimate goal within Noddings's pedagogy of care is simple: choice. All students need to be given the opportunity to choose what to learn. In this regard, she is willing to throw out all that she proposes if no one chooses to follow her. There is a certain intellectual courage and veritas in this assertion that must be admired, even if you don't like her theory.

So, the question still remains, do we affirm an ethical belief that does not line up with societal norms? You choose.