What is going on in today’s public classroom is this: the opportunity for teachers to open children’s minds and create lifelong thinking skills is being systematically and surgically removed by educational bureaucrats, politicians and administrators under the reform banner of “No Child Left Behind”.
I was a sophomore when NCLB took effect, and my high school didn’t have anywhere to go but down. As an upperclassmen, I was past the basics courses in which 45 kids would get thrown into a room with one teacher (a lab science course!). I in fact managed 4 quite pleasant years. But anyone could tell that things were deteriorating fast.
Children need more than basic skills. They need the chance to become motivated learners. They need the chance to be nurtured, to be loved. Education is not a business, a computer game, or a military operation. But to NCLB advocates, with their power-point presentations and their charts and spit-shined loafers and double-breasted suits, it is all this and more.
Intangibles are all I’ve ever taken from school. I took calculus my junior year, passed the AP exam, and can’t remember which one is an integral and which a derivative. I’ve gone to public school all my life, and been quite impressed at the caliber of my teachers. Most of them had a quite significant impact on me.
And not because they taught me what 2+2 equaled.
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