My daughter's teacher cut me off, talked over me. She had to give the whole assessment before we could discuss, but I wanted to discuss what she just said. It's fair, she wanted to get the whole assessment report out, even though they were going to be sending me the information in a letter. This is what they do, I had to adjust. Parent/Teacher conference isn't a therapy session for me, or a discussion of the larger education context. So maybe the proper form of expression is essay. Maybe we can only shine a light on our own darkness like Montaigne did.
A woman told me she knew my son when I was at the park. She's been a student teacher in his class, and he was a good student, she said. I was pleased she said nice things about my son. She said when she went to the school, and they used to be more about the arts, now it was all teaching to the tests.
I can't change schools, it's all the schools in NYC.
I know the vague curriculum and lack of assessments my hippy dippy whole language education isn't the ideal either, but how about we let children ease into education without hopping them onto the treadmill. I was proud that my daughter could identify 6 letters, she could do all these other things and only in kindergarten.
When I was growing up, I was competing with other kids in the school. We didn't have to compete with the world. I can't help but now it's full on North Korea, drill drill drill, test test test. There's no educating the whole person or allowing for exploration, time to settle.
My daughter doesn't like to do her letters. There's a crying jag every time. OK, I'll trace them, and she can write over it. But I feel like maybe there doesn't have to be pressure to be on the treadmill in kindergarten. Perhaps I'm naive, but I feel like we lose something with this approach. We lose childhood, coming to things in your own time, and many other things. What we gain is more specific assessments, and hours of homework for a kindergartener.
I didn't even bring up that they put someone else's homework in her homework folder. And I wanted to talk about what pressures they were under? To always be just assessing, and drilling. No deviation. Our conversation was the same. I wanted to ask larger questions, but that wasn't what they wanted, and they controlled the conversation. I could have ended the google meeting, but I wanted to hear what they were going to talk at me about anyway. I was thinking more about how angry I was, but they were just doing their job.
It's a larger question of our society and how sick it is. Schools contain the same illnesses we have in society but there's a kind of idealism, where you hope it's just maybe a notch better. You wish there wasn't violence, but some schools need metal detectors. You wish there wasn't teen pregnancy, but there is. Places where they give contraception away free has a lot fewer abortions and teen pregnancy, but that goes against the people who are stingy, and don't want to give anything away even if it saves money ultimately for the government. We've got a very confused and sick society and that's going to be reflected in our schools as well. So what do I expect?
I like to be healthy and whole, evolve, and start healing. Drill drill drill, test test test.
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