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Why Kids Should Be Building Rockets Instead of Taking Tests

Posted by Soulskill on from the because-the-failure-case-is-much-more-exciting dept.

An anonymous reader writes "MAKE Magazine founder Dale Dougherty has an article in Slate about how educators are missing the punchline when it comes to getting kids interested in learning. He describes a recent visit he made to a middle school: 'The science lab was empty, as were the library and the playground. It was not a school holiday: It was a state-mandated STAR testing day. The school was in an academic lockdown. This is what the American public school looks like in 2012, driven by obsessive adherence to standardized testing. The fate of children, their schools, and their teachers are based on these school test scores.' Dougherty's preference would be to more tightly integrate basic engineering projects into the science curriculum. 'I see the power of engaging kids in science and technology through the practices of making and hands-on experiences, through tinkering and taking things apart. Schools seem to have forgotten that students learn best when they are engaged; in fact, the biggest problem in schools is boredom. Students sit passively, expected to absorb all the content that is thrown at them without much context. The context that's missing is the real world."

6 of 381 comments (clear)

  1. Educators aren't missing the punchline... by fotbr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're doing exactly what they've been told to do by the system that politics has created. To fix our schools, you need to keep congress's nose out of the process, return responsibility to the individual states and local boards of education.

    1. Re:Educators aren't missing the punchline... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because if anyone knows how to create a quality education its the idiots that elect your local school board.

    2. Re:Educators aren't missing the punchline... by DesScorp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They're doing exactly what they've been told to do by the system that politics has created. To fix our schools, you need to keep congress's nose out of the process, return responsibility to the individual states and local boards of education.

      While I agree with your sentiments, educators are not only missing the punchline, they're one of the primary drivers behind the current system. Have a look at the curriculum of various education degree programs at colleges and universities... especially on the graduate side. You'll find a devotion to rigid institutional orthodoxy, and an almost cultish drive to keep non-education majors out of the the teaching ranks. Teaching has become something of a guild.

      --
      Life is hard, and the world is cruel
    3. Re:Educators aren't missing the punchline... by Sir_Sri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So that individual states can ban the teaching of evolution and institutionally ignoring climate change? If they can't find, or don't want to pay for someone who happens to understand alternating current versus direct current that's no problem, they'll just make whomever is the least liked teacher amongst the department do it.

      Education should be a federal responsibility, US students go to schools all around the country, and compete on an international stage. Allowing one state to permanently disadvantage its children by institutionalizing stupidity is precisely the sort of thing that federal governments should work to prevent. Nor is it fair that a child in a poor state will have less education resources just because that's where he or she was born, when someone who had the foresight to be born in a rich neighbourhood in a rich state will get a much better experience.

      That doesn't make any given standardized test a good idea, and it certainly doesn't make a lot of standardized testing a good idea. But you can't serious want a system where you have no idea how the kids are doing or where you need improvement. Big states (think New York, Florida, Texas, California) will still have to have some sort of standardized testing because they are big enough to warrant it, but when each state does it you can't even compare state to state easily.

      The world is in an era where you can be born in India, raised in Dubai for public school, go to highschool in Georgia (the State), got to University in California, work in New York. At no step in that process do you really want states determining your education. Does Georgia (the state) really want to have some criteria on how to assess a student coming in from every country in the world? Does some university in California really want to have thousands of different metrics for every state in every country in the world to try and figure out who to admit, and does some company based in New York really want a situation where it can't trust education from some states, but not others, and to try and figure out how to track all of that? That system is enormously wasteful, and mind numbingly stupid. Part of why the US system has so many holes in it is because individual states and school boards have decided their should be holes. (Think Kansas and Texas on evolution).

      Giving individual states responsibility for something makes sense if you can then extract the good ideas and apply them federally. It's not like states would ever be completely excluded from the process no more than the local school board or individual teacher are ever excluded from the process. But if you're all going to be americans, or south koreans or whatever, you should hope that the federal government will make sure you all get a fair opportunity if the states won't. Which they can't anymore.

      If you want a truly harsh example look at what is going to happen to kids in Greece and Spain compared to germany and france. The former two are going to have to savagely cut education (along with everything else) because they're fucked in a currency union without a fiscal union. Those kids are going to have a much harder time helping their countries fix problems in 10 years because they aren't going to be as well prepared. Should some kid born in california get a shitty education because some dipshits voted for more spending and less taxes for the last 30 years, and left no money for schools today? They're having their futures held hostage by a stupid political process which they aren't responsible for nor even a part of.

  2. Re:Teach the test? by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It may be a suboptimal result but it is at least a demonstrable result.

    People like to whine about rote learning and facts, but before you start applying "more sophisticated thinking" you have to have a solid grasp of the facts.

    You have to have something that can be measured.

    Clearly this idea scares a lot of people.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  3. Does that include localizing the funding? by John+Jorsett · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To fix our schools, you need to keep congress's nose out of the process, return responsibility to the individual states and local boards of education.

    Would you also eliminate federal funding and let states and localities pay for their own schools? Unless you do, the feds are going to put conditions on what they're paying for, and justifiably so. Personally I'd like to see the feds out of many areas, including education, since their participation comes with a lot of strings.