|
opinion:
first person perspective
Scapegoats, guinea
pigs, hinder system
I was enrolled in
the Cal State Long Beach Multiple Subject Credential program,
and well on my way to becoming an elementary school teacher,
but I have changed my mind. Veteran teachers have warned me
that the program is in an incredible mess. The situation will
not likely improve for many years.
The mess is not
the fault of the teachers of this state, most of whom are
extremely hardworking and dedicated people, but Gov. Gray
Davis, state legislators, and other politicians, who are making
scapegoats of these teachers and blaming them for students'
poor academic achievement levels.
Children in our
public schools are the guinea pigs in unfeasible educational
"improvement" experiments being haphazardly conducted
by state officials. A long-time first and second grade teacher
I know is thinking of getting out of the profession because,
she said that what the state politicians are doing to the
children "is inhumane."
So what are they
doing?
First, they decided
that because the children were not performing up to previous
academic standards, they would make the standards much higher.
That would be similar to a beginning high jumper who could
only clear 4 feet, but raising the bar to 6 feet in hopes
it would suddenly enable them to jump higher.
There are two problems
with this approach. One is that children are now forced to
learn things that teachers say they are developmentally too
immature to be able to understand. For example, teachers are
now expected to teach basic algebraic concepts to second graders.
Furthermore, underprivileged
children who have had little home experience or support in
learning and children whose English is limited, are expected
to meet the same standards as children from affluent neighborhoods
these children are given every learning advantage.
And then there
are the standardized tests, which generally do not reflect
reasonable, realistic standards, or the unrealistic standards
presently imposed on school children. After working in the
Long Beach public school system for the past several years,
I have witnessed teachers who spend large amounts of time
teaching and preparing children to take the standardized tests,
time which would be better spent teaching grade-appropriate
material.
The best you can
do as a teacher is to start at a child's present level and
then take that child at a reasonable pace as far as he or
she is able to achieve in the allotted time. Making unrealistic
demands, and testing children to see if they meet those demands,
is never going to help the situation. Neither is punishing
the teacher or the school if the child is not ready to perform
at a certain level.
I don't claim to
have all the answers, but, I believe we cannot rely solely
on teachers to solve all our problems and raise our children
for us. If we want children to know more and be able to do
more, we must stop blaming the teachers and using children
as guinea pigs in ill-conceived educational "improvement"
experiments.
In the end we need
to look to ourselves as a society for the answers. "It
takes a village to raise a child," as the old saying
goes.
Diane Green
is a print journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.
|
