Wake-Up Call
June 20, 2013
Ken Robinson, the author of Finding Your Element, is quoted in the June 10 issue of TIME saying: “I can’t imagine there’s a student in America who gets up in the morning hoping he can improve the state’s test scores.”
Dr. Robinson – aka Sir Kenneth Robinson – whose TED talk has been watched 17 million times, laments that education is being driven more and more by standardized testing, but less and less by the kind of individualized education that ignites learning. That disturbs me too.
Dropouts, delinquency and discipline problems in our schools are not addressed at all by standardized tests. In fact, the focus on such testing probably adds to each problem.
The job of teachers should not be to teach to the test, but to locate and ignite the different hot buttons of students. That’s a lot tougher, and it’s infinitely better for students, schools and society.
Dynamic classroom teachers matter. And so do those who work after hours with students in music, fine arts and athletics. Nothing matters more in bringing students to schools each morning with a sense that they’re much more than a statistic for bureaucratic measurement and political posturing.
Conventional Wisdom
August 9, 2016
The conservative columnist George Will is a baseball junkie who recently hit a homerun in his commentary just prior to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He wrote that the show in Cleveland would focus on style and trivia more than the substantive trends of the world’s circumstances.
Mr. Will speculated, and was proven correct, that the Cleveland circus would miss altogether serious developments in the South China Sea that are nearly as threatening as Hitler’s advance across Europe prior to the United States’ entering into what became World War II. He was referring to China’s aggression through the construction of islands and the conduct of military exercises in areas that the World Court has determined do not belong to China. This war on a pristine aquatic environment is upsetting the geopolitical order as well.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with sports except to point out the absurdities of our talking about trivia in one place while near tragedy goes unaddressed elsewhere ... which happens routinely in sports. For example:
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In pro football, the talk is of “Deflategate” more than domestic violence. Or, as the most recent owners’ meeting reveals, on commerce more than concussions.
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In college football, the talk is of billion dollar broadcast deals more than the broken bond between universities and the “students” they send far and wide to compete on television at any hour of any day.
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And in school sports right here in Michigan, stakeholders perseverate about football playoff expansion more than football players’ health and safety. Or on end-of-season basketball tournament seeding more than out-of-season basketball insanity.
Our challenge is to listen to all concerns but to expend leadership capital only on the matters that really matter.