Standardized curriculum, rote memorization and nationalized testing are LITERALLY destroying America

[TalkingDog]

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”

The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.

snip

Around the world, though, other countries are making creativity development a national priority. In 2008 British secondary-school curricula—from science to foreign language—was revamped to emphasize idea generation, and pilot programs have begun using Torrance’s test to assess their progress. The European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, holding conferences on the neuroscience of creativity, financing teacher training, and instituting problem-based learning programs—curricula driven by real-world inquiry—for both children and adults. In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.

Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”

[RandomThoughts]

1. There is a pretty good SG1 episode on that topic.

Learning Curve.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/73462/stargate-sg-1-learning-curve

[Posteritatis]

27. Dammit, now I need to find my Stargate DVDs... (nt)

[RandomThoughts]

46. I would be interested to know if it is the same.

Although the meaning of the story is the same, there is a continuity issue that it is hard to believe SG1 writers would make. Daniel mentions 750AD as a time for some event, that in other episodes was mentioned back in ancient Egypt during pharaoh times.

[sabrina 1]

2. 'Race to the Bottom' and we can thank Bush's No Child Left Behind

mostly for this. So why is Obama's Sec. of Ed. continuing this downward slide? Everyone knows that testing is NOT education. It's great for Bush's friends in the Educational Publishing business, they've made millions, but for the future of this country, this system is devastating.

[susanna]

6. I agree completely.

I will also point out this isn't just a K-12 thing. I returned to college after 20 years in the corporate trenches. I found that I'm a great "test taker" - I do really well on tests, actually. But I just now figured out why - it is because I take the time to learn the science/math/technology/literature/sociology/psychology/humanities behind the test. So my test scores, one could argue, are valid in a way that people "coached" to produce positive test results are not. I learned the material and I will be able to use it as a foundational construct going forward.

I see this mindset a lot with my younger co-students. "Study to the test," they tell one another (and me). And the professors, by and large, tend to accommodate this. Certain professors (outliers, I like to call them) expect you to learn the material and think critically about what you've learned. I love those profs; their essay questions make me happy. I am relatively alone in this regard, I might add. That said, I seek those professors out...I'm just more comfortable using my knowledge in a more creative way than in multiple choice, true/false testing.

Strange days.

[sabrina 1]

8. Nice post. And I'm glad you have some professors who

are smart enough to want students to know the subject. You are absolutely right that if you know the material, you will test well. But if all you know is what is on the test, then you don't know much. It is really a shame what is happening. This country is going to be so behind the rest of the world, unless something is done about this system of education.

[susanna]

9. Thank you, sabrina 1. Going back to "college" has been an eye-opener for me.

I last traveled the halls of higher education in the late 80s. I felt I was unprepared, and I did get A's and B's; I thought I might be "getting it" back then...but I worked very hard. Today, I feel like Einstein, with less relevant work. That CAN'T be right. :(

[sabrina 1]

10. That is a sad statement, susanna. Good for you for

going back though. But it must be disappointing to see what is going on.

[skepticscott]

26. I've always gotten very annoyed

when I hear the excuse from students (or adults) "I don't test well". Hogwash. If you know the material backwards and forwards and upside down, you WILL do well on tests. Saying that you don't test well (in the absence of an actual learning or language disability) is just another way of saying that you can't be bothered to learn the material well enough to truly understand it and answer any but the most trivial questions about it.

[sabrina 1]

34. Yes, that is true. But when all you know is what is on a test

you are not very well educated. And that is what is so wrong with this 'race to the top'.

[skepticscott]

47. I've been out of college for a while

but even back when I was a student, the question from students during a lecture "Will this be on the test?" was pervasive in every class. Made me want to take a club to those people. Seems that that attitude is now being nutured, and at a much earlier stage in the educational process.

[Delphinus]

13. I haven't been to college

in over, um, 15 years, let's say, but I did great with essay tests and not so great with multiple choice. One professor that I couldn't wait to take a course with turned out to be a HORRIBLE "teacher". I was lucky to get through that course with a C.

[SanchoPanza]

30. Dupe n/t

[SanchoPanza]

31. The difference really isn't in terms of teaching to the test.

Every teacher will teach to the assessment for their class, whether they design the test first (what's referred to as a "backward assessment") or last. The difference between state tests and college tests is that college tests, more often than not, are developed by the very teachers who are running the courses. They play the central role in deciding what to teach, so they're the ones who create the tests. Primary and secondary school teachers not only lack this luxury, they often do not know what content will appear on a standardized state test, and states get around this by making their assessments very broad and shallow. This happens not just in terms of content, but in assessing skill development as well. Thus the "coached" nature of responses.

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with a backward assessment. The AP battery, for example, doesn't suffer from this. They're generally very good tests designed for a classroom that encourages a rigorous examination of the content in question and focuses on the development of learning skills unique to the subject. I, for instance, have no problem using AP history exams, and I'd even use them in non-AP courses if I could. The NYS Regents (our state exam) in history, however, is a load of garbage.

[Rage for Order]

22. It wasn't just Bush's NCLB...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCLB

The bill, shepherded through the Senate by Senator Ted Kennedy, one of the bill's co-authors, received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. The House of Representatives passed the bill on May 23, 2001 (voting 384-45), and United States Senate passed it on June 14, 2001 (voting 91-8). President Bush signed it into law on January 8, 2002.



Many people in Washington, besides George Bush, supported and voted for NCLB.

[lunasun]

3. My friend is older and came out of the old Chinese system

He said it was horrible and that was all it was rote memorization spiced with telling you about the evils of the other types of government around the world. All the literature, music and art was about the cultural revolution. If you were creative you were laughed at for the useless talent.
He said China and US are trading places in so many ways nowdays.

I told him well at least you got art, music and phys ed. Here those are being phased out for more rote memorization time!

His mother unfortuanately came from an even worse era with Mao after the revolution, no real education at all they are called the 'lost generation'
not good in essential knowledge needed but they can sure quote Mao ....

Maybe we will come down to that except it will be just bible verses, maybe that is all the kids really need to know...

who knows except I have a young child and it is all sad
and parents need not give opinion( not that individual teachers can do anything out of the box anymore anyway)

[wickerwoman]

4. As part of my old job,

I used to observe English-language classrooms in China. It was appalling. To prepare for the IELTS test, the teacher made a ten page list of vocabulary words on a particular topic. Then she would stand in front of the class and read the words (often incorrectly) and the students would repeat them. For four hours. Very common English homework in China is to go home and memorize the dictionary. This was about two years ago.

It might be marginally better in the very top academies in Shanghai and Beijing... I was observing private high schools in Shanghai. I guarantee it's a lot worse when you get into non-magnate public schools and out of the top-tier cities. Even in third tier cities like Fujian, it's not uncommon for the teacher not to have graduated high school.

Also, re: the lost generation. I have a friend who's a lawyer in her early 30s. She told me she regularly argues cases in front of Cultural Revolution era judges who not only are completely ignorant of the law but are functionally illiterate and sleep through the trials. There is no mechanism for removing them. They just to wait for them to die off. *Don't get arrested in China, boys and girls*

[bobburgster]

11. There are many who would applaud if this happened....

"....Maybe we will come down to that except it will be just bible verses, maybe that is all the kids really need to know...
..."

The ignorant do not protest.

[wickerwoman]

5. That plus intolerance for dialogue, I think.

We're so polarized and afraid of offending anybody, even on what should be straight-forward issues like evolution, we don't discuss things anymore. And without intellectually honest, rational discussion and weighing of diverse views, there is no real learning or progress.

I recently went back to school (I'm 33 in a programme with a lot of 21 year olds). In one class I made a comment about something and said I wasn't sure about something but I thought... and another student corrected me and filled in the actual information. Then she came up to me after class, apologizing strenuously for "disagreeing" with me. I was like "you sooo don't have to apologize. I'm happy to have my mistakes corrected and I love to be disagreed with."

I just found it so bizarre many of my classmates that age don't seem to contradict even the most patent balderdash and feel that they need to apologize for having an opinion.

Even here on DU, I find people who are hyper-apologetic about disagreeing with me. When did we (as Americans) reach the point where honest, fact-based arguments have to be offered tentatively on the end of a long stick?

[laughingliberal]

7. K & R nt

[WinkyDink]

12. EVERY point in the OP title is WRONG: It is LACK of any memorization that is killing US education.

Students need not actually learn and remember ANYthing beyond arithmetic and the alphabet. All they DO is sit in groups and "brainstorm." FACTS are ANATHEMA IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

2.) THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "STANDARDIZED CURRICULUM." A CURSORY glance at, say, three contiguous school districts would have made this abundantly clear. Textbooks, lesson plans, course offerings, grading systems,....ALL DIFFERENT IN SOME IF NOT ALL RESPECTS.

3.) THERE IS NO NATIONAL STANDARDIZED TESTING. PA., e.g., gives its own PSSA tests, developed at the state level by a consortium of local entities, for Grades 4, 8, 11, and maybe more at this point.
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/pennsylvania_system_of_school_assessment_%28pssa%29/8757

BTW: You will notice that only science and mathematics are considered valuable. Technological innovation rules. No more do human beings care to discover the wherefores of their humanity.

And THAT is why American students admire Ayn Rand.

[Delphinus]

14. Humanities & the arts

were where I fared best - loved the classes and what I learned (college).

Unfortunately, I think you are right when you say, No more do human beings care to discover the wherefores of their humanity.

[Catshrink]

15. I don't know where you get your information but you are sadly misinformed.

#1 - really? Sit in groups and brainstorm? Not in my classes. Yes, we have group work and part of that is thinking about and articulating what they know about a topic before it's presented. It's called "activating prior knowledge" and is an important part of learning.

#2 - common curriculum - well there are common standards being developed. How those are taught is up to districts and states. Think about it -- do you want your kid using Texas textbooks? Not methods work for all students and for all teachers. That's one of the problems with the Duncan/Bush/Obama approach: they want to treat all students exactly the same and it just won't work. Some are visual learners, some auditory, etc. Some kids need more support in reading, some in math. Some are ELL. Education is not and cannot be a one-size-fits-all method. But, this is where it's heading under this regime, especially with the billionaire boys's club -- Bill Gates' wet dream is to see all of our school children sitting at computer stations doing their classes online.

link to common core standards (only available for English and Math):
http://www.corestandards.org/

#3 - standard testing is coming. I forgot how many companies/states are working on it now. There's big bucks to be had and you can bet the publishers are salivating over the opportunity to get their mitts on that much public money. I went to a meeting a couple of weeks ago fronted by an university group but funded by publishers. They talked up a "new" test -- the rub is the school district had to buy their curriculum to be sure they were hitting all of the questions on the test. It's a freaking scam.

Just curious: What role do you play in the education field?

[Lucian]

32. Obviously you haven't been in a school for the last ten years.

:eyes:

[Catshrink]

33. Actually, I've been teaching all that time.

So yes, I do know. Is your experience that of a student?

[Lucian]

43. Yes.

[WinkyDink]

39. "Common standards" does not = "common curriculum".

Granted, algebra I is algebra I, but no English teacher must teach the exact same poems and novels from state to state.
"Is coming" does not = "HERE NOW."
"Will have" does not = "HAS."

My "role"? I could be the mailman and still be correct.

The U.S.:
Has no "nationalized standardized testing."
Has no "common curriculum."
Has little to no dependence on "rote memorization."

If the OP is PREDICTING, I wish he'd tell me the winner of the fifth at Aqueduct.

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. A focus on memorization leaves no time for critical thinking and problem solving

2. Yes there is a standardized curriculum. My district is implementing it this fall. The movement towards national standards has been growing for at least 15 years.

3. Yes there is a national standardized test. It's called the NAEP and is administered annually in selected school districts across the country. Its results are often cited, particularly when our test scores are compared to other countries.

[laughingliberal]

23. +1000 nt

[txlibdem]

38. Memorization is step #1 in understanding

How can you "brain storm" or "activate prior knowledge" when you have none of the facts yet. Only after having full and complete knowledge of all the facts and interrelations of a thing can one formulate an intelligent opinion.

I don't care what a person who knows nothing about a subject "thinks" or "feels" about it. That's just another way of asking what are your pre-conceived notions about it, what are your prejudices. And sharing incorrect data may taint the minds of the other students, make it harder for them to learn the true facts. In the case of history, what do students honestly know about Che Guevara before being taught?

Memorization is the first step, a very important part of learning. A student then has to take all the facts and figures from years of memorization and make sense of it all. But trying to make sense of a subject such as monitory policy in the USA before you know anything about the federal reserve and the congress is a fool's errand. In that case, at best you end up with a classroom of kids who just accept the teacher's opinion or who shut their mind off and no longer care about the subject.

[WinkyDink]

41. There is NO national standardized curriculum. If there were, every school district would be FORCED

to implement it. Yesterday.
Your school district is CHOOSING to use what, I'm willing to bet, a committee looked at and recommended to the Director of Curriculum, and it went up the chain from there.

A national standardized curriculum comes from the top down, and by "top" I mean D.C.

[proud2BlibKansan]

45. You are arguing apples and oranges

There are indeed national standards. But not all school districts use them. There are also state standards and those are usually mandated to be used in every school district in the state.

The existence of the standards and a mandate for their use are two separate things.

[WinkyDink]

42. "Selected school districts" is NOT NATION-WIDE, by definition!

[Posteritatis]

28. Have you ever been to school? (nt)

[WinkyDink]

44. OFGS, I was in elementary school when the OP must have stopped HIS observations, in the 1950's.

Either my post stands on its merits, or it doesn't.

How about the OP NAME the "nationalized standardized" test he refers to?

How about the OP give a specific EXAMPLE of "standardized curriculum"?

[TheKentuckian]

16. K&R going head first into a flawed model is not progress

[JCMach1]

17. Disgraceful... we have turned our system into 'teaching to the test'

Which has not worked anywhere.

[datasuspect]

19. good debt slaves don't need creativity, the ability to reason, or even literacy for that matter

they just need the bare minimum to know how to carry out verbal and simplistic written/pictographic commands - at minimum.

having a nation of thinkers is detrimental to the corporate state.

[Laelth]

20. k&r for the turth. Well said. n/t

-Laelth

[cordelia]

21. K&R

[AnArmyVeteran]

24. Bush destroyed the Texas education system while governor

Governor Bush began standardized testing and ever since then teachers have been held back from teaching students and told they have to teach the students the answers of the state-mandated TAAS test, as it was known when it first started. When Bush was running for governor in 1992 he promised to abolish the Texas Education Agency. But instead, Bush stacked it with his cronies and gave the TEA even more power over teachers. Because teachers were forced to teach the TAAS test it took away from the educational experience for the students.

Conservative republicans have always held teachers with contempt. They hate teacher's unions. But the result of Bush's new top down education system was drastic. Under Bush 50% of teachers said they would quit teaching within 3 years. Teacher morale plummeted. They wanted out of teaching if they were going to be forced to just teach answers to a test. Some principals and teachers were even caught changing the student's answers on the tests because of the pressure from above was so great.

Even with a standardized test, there was so much pressure a lot of students were exempted from taking the test if teachers felt they wouldn't do well. So this artificially gave the state higher test score results. But the children weren't learning. Texas became number one in the country in 10th grade dropouts. And Texas high school graduates scored horribly on college entrance examinations.

Republicans love top down education systems. They love control. And they love to dominate teachers. When Bush became president his education secretary Rod Paige said "Teacher's unions are terrorist organizations".

At one time, teachers were respected and honored by society. But as their control over the classrooms were chipped away by top down education systems they became neutered and found it almost impossible to teach. In Texas, the average teacher takes $1,000 out of their pockets just to get the supplies they need to teach. How many people in any other business would take that much money out of their pockets for a company? None. Teachers are low paid and overworked, and then they have to use their own money just to teach children. No wonder teachers' morale in Texas is so low.

Standardized testing is a failed system.

[JDPriestly]

25. Creative, curious, determined people can learn anything.

Numb, oblivious, bored people can learn next-to-nothing.

Another word for numb, oblivious and bored is stupid.

Another word for creative, curious determined is intelligent.

[mnhtnbb]

29. But the companies that develop and score the tests are laughing all the way to the bank.

This is the purpose of government to Republicans: to create opportunities for business.

[LWolf]

35. Yet the majority of Americans, including Democrats,

continue to support the policies responsible and vote for candidates that continue and expand them.

Boot the authoritarian "standards and accountability" standardization regime, and the situation will turn around. Keep them at the reins, and watch us further implode into ignorance.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

36. And simultaneously a classical liberal arts educations falls precipitously.

All education is about jobs these days. "What will your degree get you?"--this is the question repeatedly asked.

Ask yourself this: what would you say if your kid said, "I want to major in one of these: Greek, Latin, philosophy, literature (English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, etc.), Art, Mathematics, History, Theology . . . yeah, you get the idea.

What if, what if, your kid had no idea what she wanted to get out of college with regards to a job? What if she wanted to go to be liberally educated and thought that this was a good in and of itself? What if the school believed that college wasn't there to get your kid a job, but was there simply to educate your child? Can you find a college out there like this? I'd love to see that recruiting video.

High schools are simply a trickle down from the sad corporatization of our college/university systems. Sad students who just want a degree in order to get a job; in the meantime, they'll just get drunk.

You kids get off my damn lawn.

I'm not bashing students here. I hate the system we've been handed. Students simply take what they're given. And there are, of course, GREAT students out there who desire a liberal arts education AND who desire professionalization. So forgive the generalizations.

I just ran out of prune juice.

And I'm really blaming all of the sell-out corporatist "Marxist" professors who let all of this happen.

[eecumings]

37. Take bright-eyed

eager-to-learn 6-year-olds. Now stuff them into over-crowded classrooms controlled by the worst behaved among them. Try to ram a standardized curriculum into their collective minds. Test the shit our of them. Praise rote memorization. By the end of the year, few of these children will have any desire to learn. The system made sure of that.

I met many of them on the junior college level. Most had been bored stiff in school; now they wanted a certificate to help them get a better job. Some told me they learned very little, knew they didn't know much, and didn't care, as long as they got grades that would provide the certificate.
Most of them could not compose a complex English sentence, nor understand one. If they were trapped in a class where the teacher expected them to learn the material, they simply stopped at the registrar's office and dropped the class.

I retired in 1998, but teachers were already feeling the crunch to teach to the test. NCLB is an abject failure. Duncan and Obummer's Race to the Top is criminal. Charter schools are simply a way for greedy manipulators to grab more and more tax money without producing any better results than public schools. And don't forget the religious maggots who want public schools replaced by religious training camps.

You got problems right there in River City. Good Luck.

[Canuckistanian]

40. Mission accomplished, then.

Intelligent, critical thinking graduates are rare. And getting rarer, it seems.

But hey, at least they'll work for peanuts.