Teaching is not a zero-sum game

I keep wondering about what people think they are doing when they try to force knowledge into peoples' heads, particularly against the will of the students. It's pretty obvious, this is not going to work. Nevertheless, we keep on with the same old tired curriculum that is designed to meet the goals which are assessed by the achievement test the state requires.

In fact, having goals and benchmarks are not so bad. Accountability is a good thing--and we need to have all kids making progress. We need to KNOW that kids are making progress, so I'm not opposed to the idea of accountability.

What I am opposed to is an accountability that uses problematic forms of assessment and that encourages zero-sum teaching.

What I mean by this is that teaching becomes an "I win you lose" zero-sum situation when the teacher is set up to have all the intellectual authority in the classroom. And in a school where there is concern about students passing achievement tests, this has a tendency to happen because it's easier to make sure specific content is covered when the teacher has all the control.

Yet this turns compliant students into automatons without intellectual curiosity, people who really don't like learning because their experience with it is that it is either boring in the process (e.g., lecture, worksheets, and test) or boring in the topic.

Noncompliant students get stuck in the ghetto of special education and drop out. Then for some strange reason, they have a tendency to get involved in drugs and other illegal activities. Or else they work under the table for less than minimum wage because they don't have a high school diploma. Our school system perpetuates the under class.

So, if I'm complaining, then surely I have some kind of answer. We all know there is a mess. The question becomes, how to clean it up.

First off, teachers and students are not robots. Currently we have the franchise model of education, where we think we can transport an educational program or curriculum from one set of people to another set of people if only we write a thorough manual and script everything the teachers do.

This is an insult to the professionality of teachers, and it also means that teachers are not required, much less encouraged, to address the individual needs of each student.

I think the fear is, if we allow teachers to "do what they want," then there will be chaos and classrooms will be very different from one another. Benchmarks won't be met and kids won't learn.

Many, many kids are not learning now. The drop out rate is appalling. I have seen kids in classrooms who were jaded in second grade and virtually uncontrollable by fourth grade.

Perhaps, if we put an emphasis on benchmarks but also meeting the needs of students and allowing schools to choose how they are going to show that their students are meeting the benchmarks, we might be better off. Yes, there are some teachers who cannot handle this level of responsibility, who cannot meet the needs of all the learners in the class. But with the scripted programs, NONE of the teachers are meeting the needs. With more choices for teachers about how they teach and more respect for the teacher's professionality, perhaps more children will be learning.

Education is a cooperative activity in the final analysis. It's not "banking pedagogy" as Friere said, where the teacher makes a deposit in the head of the student. Benchmarks can be met AND children can learn to make good decisions about how they learn. Instead of zero-sum, we can have win-win.