Bridging the Gap from Common Core Back to Common Sense

My brain is going in so many ways right now, mostly because I have been in contact with some former students recently who were I the first wave or two of the Common Core Tsunami when they were in middle school. There are three students in particular that come to mind. What made these wonderful young people special was their intelligence…but unfortunately the craze of standardized testing and scripted lessons did nothing to truly reflect neither the range nor the depth of their respective thoughts. They were creators, they were thinkers, they were wonderfully dazzlingly brilliant & beautiful. Of the three one could function within our public education system well enough that they did well on homework, quizzes, testing, all those things schools like to see. Another could do all those things but quite honestly she was not really hung up on such things so did not “score” as well as she could have on our boxy little rubrics. The third was not cut out for homework, quizzes, studying for tests and subsequently did not great (as schools measure it) on any of them. In each case we were trying to pound the square peg into round hole it did not fit into. In each case the system sucked any possible potential to instill a joy of learning right out of them. I liken our current system to taking all of our children and putting them one at a time into a funnel.

The top of a funnel by its very nature will accept a larger size, a wider range of individuality as it were. As one progresses down the funnel though the object must become smaller to completely make it through. In the case of our kids we narrow their thinking…we narrow it, we control it, we standardize it. This is done all in the name of collecting data via a standardized test, which in turn is claimed to measure intelligence and growth. The false claims are that these tests measure growth and a myriad of other things when what they are really measuring is how well a child functions in a system that more and more is having its humanity stripped from it and a system that fails to see the whole child. What they are really measuring is how our kids function in a current system created by people with little or no background, experience, or expertise in childhood development, adolescence, or education. How well they can fit into a standardized form is king. How well they conform rules the day.

We are killing them.

Our funnel design is wrong. It needs to have wide mouth and become wider. It needs to become wider because if true education is happening then it simply must in order that our children have the room to grow and flow easily. Education is about the expansion of one’s mind, not the narrowing of one’s thoughts.

In a Facebook open letter post to Bill Gates I stated the following: “I submit to you that an educational system that becomes over reliant upon technology and focusses upon breaking our children down to nothing more than a collection of data points in order to “serve them” better misses the point. It misses the point because education, true education, is to make the human being better….not make the human being perform better on a test. It is about inspiring, it is about the lifting of not just academics but more importantly the human spirit. It is about stoking the fires of desire to learn and unleashing an individual’s potential. It is about freedom. It is about humanity.

When a test on a computer overrides the input of the people involved with a child each and every day regarding decisions about a child’s education…about a child’s life…then we have given over too much power to technology in the name of standardization. We have indeed removed the humanity from humanity…. …..and that day has come. My data: I witnessed happen, and sadly do so every day. That is why I fight. I do not have your money Mr. Gates, nor do any of my peers who fight against what you are trying to do. We are not the enemy, we are fighting for our children, the children we are with every day, the children we know and love. While we do not have your money sir we more than make up for in things that often defy measurement.

The immeasurables so important to humanity: compassion, passion, perseverance, empathy, and an indomitable human spirit. To put it terms YOU may understand: we have grit and tenacity, and our kids don’t need you or FedEd to teach our children that…they see it in us every day.”

If even one of our children sees any of our schools like the depiction below then we have failed them. The drawing below was specifically drawn for me by a seventh grade girl when I asked her to use her art to describe her feelings about school (in the common core age).

Unfortunately…this is how the policies enacted by our own government at both the federal and state levels have affected far too many of our children. Not surprising when our children are seen as data points and human capital and not human beings. We have indeed failed them.

Stop the madness. Save our children. Our children are neither common nor standard issue, nor should we treat them as such.