My friend sent me this article (you should read it, really) by Bill Ayers (yes, that Bill Ayers) about education and I have to say I resonate with quite a bit of it. Now I’m not going to pretend to know all I need to know to be terribly well-educated (ha?) about the ins and outs of education reform–I know some about Michelle Rhee, etc, but not enough to be an incredibly informed voice in this debate. (I should work on that.) However, I wanted to share the part of the article that really hit home with me, and perhaps voice a few comments of my own.
First, from Mr. Ayers:
We want our students to be able to think for themselves, to make judgments based on evidence and argument, to develop minds of their own. We want them to ask fundamental questions—Who in the world am I? How did I get here and where am I going? What in the world are my choices? How in the world shall I proceed? — and to pursue answers wherever they might take them. Democratic educators focus their efforts, not on the production of things so much as on the production of fully developed human beings who are capable of controlling and transforming their own lives, citizens who can participate fully in civic life.
Democratic teaching encourages students to develop initiative and imagination, the capacity to name the world, to identify the obstacles to their full humanity, and the courage to act upon whatever the known demands. Education in a democracy should be characteristically eye-popping and mind-blowing–always about opening doors and opening minds as students forge their own pathways into a wider world.
How do our schools here and now measure up to the democratic ideal?
Bill Ayers goes on to answer that question himself (and I like his answer), but clearly, people–I don’t care what you know about education–if you have even the slightest notion of the power of standardized testing these days, you know we are not measuring up to that ideal!
In fact, I came into education with a vision of educating my students based on those “fundamental questions” Ayers mentions in that first paragraph (Who in the world am I? How did I get here and where am I going? What in the world are my choices? How in the world shall I proceed?) and am continually disheartened by how little we are encouraged to pursue that vision, and how little time there is to teach to it in the midst of EOC, EOC, EOC.
There is more I could say (including that I think there is certainly a need for accountability in education–I just don’t think it should come from standardized tests) but I’ll leave it at this for now.
It’s just–I was reminded of that all-important vision and those fundamental questions a couple of times today, and I think I had forgotten them, at least a little bit.
So–how in the world shall I proceed?
