Author and education expert Alfie Kohn addresses the difficult question of how school reform affects children of color in this opinion article in Education Week.
Kohn makes the case that education reform, including the tenets of No Child Left Behind introduced in part by President George W. Bush and now supported by President Obama, harms low-income and minority children by reducing teaching to rote learning.
Kohn writes:
The “the overly directive, mind-numbing, ... anti-intellectual acts” that pass for teaching in most urban schools “not only remain the coin of the realm but have become the gold standard.” It is how you’re supposed to teach kids of color.
Kohn describes classrooms where worksheets, practice tests and drills have replaced any encouragement of critical thinking or creativity.
As a result, some argue, society replicates itself, with the children of the poor being trained to take their places as rule-following laborers who know how to follow rules set by the elite, but who do not know how to question authority, to think critically or to solve problems for themselves.
This is a complaint that we also have heard from teachers, as we travel the country advancing the causes of educational and social justice.
We frequently hear from teachers in low-income and working class areas who complain that they are expected to focus on test-taking skills and a very basic curriculum. Children are expected to be quiet and still for the bulk of the day, and are rarely given opportunities to interact with each other or to discuss and explore what they are learning.
The picture seems much different in upper-income schools, where administrators have the luxury of not worrying as much about high-stakes testing, because children come to school well prepared and test scores tend to already be high.
What do you think? Is current education reform working, or are we dumbing down education for our poorest students, sentencing them to lives as followers instead of leaders?
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