StickWithANose

One of the central contradictions of the market-based education reforms promoted by think-tanks, business groups and the White House is that these reforms are predicated on the perceived educational need to produce high-performing students with the creative-innovative skills to develop new technologies, grow new industries and establish a foundation for continued economic growth in a globalizing world, yet a quick glance at the reforms actually being advocated quickly demonstrates that the outcomes of those reforms will produce students who are the antithesis of this ideal.

Schools Matter points toward this celebratory piece in the LA Times as a prime example of what can only be described as the militarization of schooling and provides the appropriate context.

In Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt pointed out that those who commit horrible acts are not only crazy fanatics but rather ordinary people who are willing to carry out terrible things in an organized, systematic way because it has become “normalized” within the society.

As the Race to the Top – that is to the top scores on standardized tests, becomes the absolute measure of a child’s success, degrading, humiliating behavior that destroys the very souls of children that should be abhored is increasingly tolerated and encouraged by those who continue to perpetuate this system for their own financial self interests. As long as parents, educators and the American public continue to accept the normalization of a very sick educational system focused on racing [to] the top via test scores, providing opportunity to those who do not question authority, teachers will continue to leave their humanity outside the school door.