I freely concede that there is a deliberately paleolithic quality to my classroom, or at least, an early 1990s feel to the Bunker of Learning. As we journey farther and farther into the twenty-first century, I derive special relish from the perplexed expressions on the faces of the youts when they amble into P 115 and gaze upon an overhead projector. One especially confused child asks, "What IS that?" I tell him, and he asks, "what does it do?" To which I say, "this way learning lies." Then they see the VCR. Mystified again, they query, "What's THAT?" I tell them, and they tenaciously follow up with, "Well, what does it do." They are astonished when I tell them. Then they point at my Larry Bird posters and ask, "Who's that, and why is he wearing such short shorts?" I always respond, "this is your personal savior. Accept him on behalf of your own salvation."
"Technology has democratized carnage." -Jon Stewart
Yesterday the state superintendent of schools, for whom I voted at some point in the past, unveiled the latest breathtaking testing regimen for California public schools. Rather than inveigh against the various features of this latest proposal, many of which are as expensive as they are hazy, I submit a modest request: Let us have a moratorium on educational reform by politicians of both parties. Just leave the schools alone for a decade. Feel free to get rid of some mandates and some tests, but otherwise, just restrain that reformer impulse and leave things be. Please.
One of the more nebulous, if portentous pronouncements to which one is consistently subjected at educator trainings/forums/meetings/conventions goes something like this: We must prepare our students to compete in the global marketplace of the twenty-first century. Very dramatic and compelling, that. But what exactly does it mean? Compete for what? For jobs? If so, how does that job competition work? Compete for whom? Compete with whom? Where is this global marketplace? What is it? Is there some gigantic Manpower headquarters under construction in the lobby of the U.N. that we're going to find out about someday soon? The whole global competition line has a very dashing and urgent quality to it, like something out of the Cold War (we must study our math lest the godless Commies beat us to the Moon), but ultimately it is unclear as to what, if anything, it really means. It is the frenzied pursuit of phantoms, ultimately collapsing in exhaustion and futility.
I used to obsess over my students' test scores. I used to pore over the performance of every individual student on the STAR Exam and the A.P. Test, scrutinizing and dissecting the numbers, sifting through the data in search of some grand significance and enlightenment. No more. My statistical monomania as an educator was blasted to smithereens by Sandy Hook. Sandy Hook made the preoccupation with a narrow numerical definition of student achievement seem fully obscene and futile. There is so much more to education than our bingeing on multiple choice data, and we must disenthrall ourselves if we are to ever achieve any true measure of "student achievement."
I used books to build barricades in my classroom yesterday. They make highly sturdy fortifications, and perhaps one day will prove the truth of the ancient adage that the printed word is mightier than the Bushmaster. While my room is not quite yet the Bunker of Learning that I desire, I am hopeful that soon it will be capable of withstanding the latest incarnation of apocalyptic lunacy that might lumber and lurch in our general direction. The most remarkable aspect of the entire project is that the beneficiaries of the enterprise seem wholly unaware of its purpose or its existence, and this I consider my greatest educational triumph of all.
