Found this lovely quote on the Borderland blog that really sums up what I see as a huge problem with school as it stands…
My classroom doesn’t work the way I want it to. In the Age of Accountability, I focus on process, and see product as a secondary concern. I’m an ill-fitting peg, uneasy about participating in what, for me, amounts to a charade – emulating archaic practices designed for kids from bygone eras.
Looking at the group I’m with now, thinking about them, and not the generic, bloodless beings called Students, statistical incarnations of demographically catalogued learners, I feel more strongly than ever that I owe each of them more than mere delivery of the curriculum, and concern for where they stand relative to a standard that I don’t endorse.
I have lost track of the number of times I’ve remarked that the dominant content-driven approach to the way we are told to teach is fundamentaly flawed, only to have other teachers respond with “but they have to learn that content or they won’t pass the test at the end”.
They fail to grasp that it’s the system that’s the problem. I reckon it’s about time for a good old fashioned rebellion…
