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Originally Posted by El Blanco
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It was conducted by a black woman who teaches in my district to predominantly poor minorities of color. The crux of her lecture was that teachers have essentially become too scared to teach, that a lot of the "feel good, multicultural" liberalism that has dominated educational theory over the past decade or so has only hurt poor minorities, particularly African-Americans.
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So, whats your opinion on that? I know what you think about standardized testing, but what about the massaging the ego of these kids? |
I disagree with it. I don't know that you're really even "massaging their ego," all you're doing is creating what are essentially different standards within the classroom, which sucks. I understand that one needs to respect the various levels these kids are at, but I personally think that children (particularly young ones) are highly capable, and often appreciative, of being challenged. I know that from my own tutoring experience, I felt that I was accomplishing the most when I had a kid read a book that was too hard for them. They struggled, tried harder, and then requested to read it next time, give it another shot, etc.
As for standardized testing, I understand that it's necessary, but I have personally seen the strain placed on both students and teachers who are CONSTANTLY testing....
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I agree that one solution isn't going to fix such a large problem, but we have to get the ball rolling somehow.
I want to know what place do this and the other solutions have.
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I'm not going to pretend that I even have any idea as to how we can fix it. One thing I've noticed is that it has to start early, whatever may be the case. Making adjustments solely at the high school level seems counter-productive to me. By 4th or 5th grade, many of these kids are set on the path they're going to take, IMO.
Capacity at schools seems to be an issue. It seems to me that there's little you can do about that, either. Particularly where I work, with immigrants from Mexico, and even all parts of Asia.
I think I'm a supporter of pay for performance when it comes to teachers, I would just hate to see test scores as the ONLY benchmark for that....
And then there are the parents. Geez, what a mess that tends to be.....I hate to be the Malthusian here, but these kids (namely the parents) need to stop having kids.