Just a reminder that universal statements about people such as, “All so-and-sos are this and that,” are seldom true. AJ, in my experience it is not true that “Teachers don’t read or want to improve themselves.”
NCLB seems to assume that children don’t want to learn, teachers don’t want to teach, principles don’t want learning to happen in their schools but that all this can be changed by treating them as miscreants and applying maximum pressure. I fear we are simply making our schools unpleasant places to be.
Stop a moment and think about how you actually learn. What do you do in your spare time? Does it involve learning something? Can you recall spending time with a child and realizing the kid was learning a great deal? Was it a stressful experience or a pleasant one?
I’m a home schooling granny in order to preserve my granddaughters’ love of learning.
One final question: does testing serve the child’s learning or the adult’s desire evidence that it is happening? I think we make a grave mistake when we confuse one with the other.
