Leave the Children Alone - Part II

“Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught. However, most of what we learn before, during, and after attending schools is learned without its being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk, talk, eat, dress, and so on without being taught these things. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much of what is remembered is irrelevant.” –  Russell L.Ackoff in The Objective of Education Is Learning, Not Teaching

“Kids who are in school just visit life sometimes and then they have to stop to do homework or go to sleep early or get to school on time. They’re constantly reminded they are preparing for real life. While being isolated from it.“ –  Sandra Dodd, teacher and unschooling advocate

“The symbolic representation of life is not the same as life itself. Perhaps the greatest harm done by technology is an act of omission. Every hour of screen time, whether in school or at home, is an hour not spent in some much more important activity, especially those things that involve real human engagement.”  

The last quote is from my own book, First Do No Harm: Progressive Education in a Time of Existential Risk.  I take self-indulgent pleasure in placing myself in the company of eminent philosopher and mathematician Russell Ackoff, author of the first quote.  He was a dear friend and colleague of my father some 60 years ago and, until I discovered this quote, I did not know his progressive education inclinations.

In the midst of the pandemic, the education establishment is grinding teeth to the gums fretting about the aftermath of a year of frustrating and unproductive online and hybrid schooling for America’s children.  In a previous post I sought to debunk the notions of “summer slide” or “pandemic slide.”   Even the unimportant facts and information stuffed into little heads don’t evaporate over a “slide.”  But in a remarkable display of confirmation bias, administrators, policy makers and education “experts” are combing through mountains of data to find a problem for which they can design a data-driven solution.

Take the current edition of Education Week (please! - with a nod to Rodney Dangerfield). This is a sample of heads and subheads:

*  State Grades on Chance for Success: 2021 Map and Rankings

*  Global Test Finds Digital Divide Reflected in Math, Science Scores

*  Making Decisions Without the Data?

*  A Seat at the Table With Education Week: Testing & Accountability

*  No Going Back’ From Remote and Hybrid Learning, Districts Say

* Are Today’s Students Set Up for Success? Nation Earns B-Minus in Latest EdWeek Index

Recognizing the rich irony of doing so, I invoke the glib phrase “garbage in, garbage out,” coined by computer scientists to point out that the result computed by any algorithm will be only as good/accurate as the goodness/accuracy of the input.   I suggest that the entire education edifice is a house of punch cards with holes in the wrong places.  

As the EdWeek sample indicates, addressing pandemic and post-pandemic schooling requires fierce examination of “the data,” as though there is a body of data - THE data - that will reveal the proper strategy.  Education is not alone in this absurd infatuation with data.  Data-driven practices.  Data-driven professionals.  One would think if not for data in the driver’s seat, no destination is reachable.  This contemporary obsession relegates instinct, critical analysis, passion, intuition, observation and other qualitative human phenomena to the backseat.  

Reliance on data in education is fundamentally flawed in both the individual and aggregate realms. 

Data is gathered by assessment, usually some standardized exam.  But children are not standard.  Different developmental trajectories and differing strengths and ways of perceiving and processing those perceptions make standardized assessments oxymoronic.  It’s like measuring melodies with a slide rule.  The typical standardized tests measure the things that are among the least important things about children.  They don’t measure humor, curiosity, capacity to see and hear beauty, imagination, originality, creativity, compassion, empathy, eccentricity and more.   

These tests measure only one thing: the ability to perform well on these tests.   On the individual level the test results will be used to place each child on a continuum of worth where their placement can determine future opportunity, sense of self and a certain kind of stature within and without school.  Most infuriating is that this process serves to repress and perhaps eventually extinguish those qualities we should most value in our children and students.  As just one example, research indicates that innate curiosity, in full bloom in third grade, is almost entirely extinguished by eighth grade in traditional public schools.

Returning to the garbage in, garbage out notion, the meaningless individual scores are then dumped into an aggregate assessment by classroom, school, school district, state and nation, creating a virtual landfill of steaming irrelevance.   What these scores represent, with startling accuracy, are poverty, community stress, environmental injustice, inequitable school funding and lousy facilities.   The comparative scores among and between schools represent degrees of disadvantage - not anything at all about children or their teachers.  But rather than addressing those social realities, we will blame the students and teachers, doubling down on test preparation, enacting abusive discipline practices, and prescribing longer school days and school years. 

The extent to which these things are true varies from school to school depending primarily on privilege.  The most severe wrongheaded practices are reserved for the least privileged kids, virtually assuring the perpetuation of disadvantage.

It has been a hell of a year for everyone, but especially for children.   What they need when the pandemic releases its oppressive grip is to fully feel life again.   They need to giggle with friends and have school days comprised of things like recess, art, music and lunch.

What they don’t need is a posse of data-driven bureaucrats making up for lost time by fretting over grade level standards and frantically imposing more standardized curricula on non-standard children in order to fill a non-existent deficit.