I have students. I am college professor. Generally speaking in these very tough economic times, they come to school not for an education but to get that piece of paper they have been grandly told over and over again will get them a job. Oh, yeah, I guess that is confusing, going to school but not for an education. Let me explain.
We have a thing in America called No Child Left Behind, which makes the mammoth and bizarre claim that we can measure progress based on tests. That’s right, bizarre. I might agree with you if had some numbers correlating success with grades (and you don’t). Oh, there are some university studies, which since they develop their very own concept of what we might call success, don’t amount to anything useful. (If you get to decide what determines success for your own programs, you have a tendency to win.)
No Child Left Behind means that for a school to be determined to be successful (worthy of money from the State and the Feds), it has to have good test scores generated by its students. So, in pursuit of this, students are drilled relentlessly in the subjects to be tested. The school that drills its students longer and harder than the others is supposed to be improving. Since the primary indicator of grades is social and economic class, the scores fall into utterly predictable categories. Obviously there are variations. An inspired group of teachers can pump up test scores with skill and effort. But inspired teachers are just like inspired politicians, inspired architects, inspired pediatricians, etc. There are only so many per profession.
Now, you will find that there are people who say we can train teacher to be inspired in large numbers. That enthusiasm and a willingness to go beyond requirements should be the standard. This is nonsense. There are only so many inspired, truly dedicated individuals on earth and that’s it.
The effect over time of teaching to large scale tests is devastating. Students are conditioned not to think but to remember. The advent of the internet solves many problems of remembering and great deal of remembering is useless trivia. America needs thinkers and it’s as if we wish to exterminate them that we do this crazy testing. We have perverted the idea of education from developing human beings to the production of standard products as if on an assembly line. My students aren’t products, they are people. Human achievement is not measured by tests. No test will ever be a substitute for the real life measurements of success these people will produce.
It fills me with rage to look at what has been done to my students. I want thinkers, doers and patriots. What I get are rote learners, good passive students and bumper sticker patriots whose knowledge of the greatness of this nation is limited to the most trivial.
You see, there is a funny thing about these people, these students; they’re magnificent. When I look over my classes I don’t see A and B and C students. I see these people waiting to be told of the enormous power, potential and talent they each carry within them.
My students are the heart and soul of America. They are leaders of the next generation. They work hard. I don’t see the government of the United States lavishing care on these most vital people for the future of this country. There is more an attitude of how much we can make them financially obligated for the rest of their lives and make sure that they don’t escape paying a dime of it.
We need to figure out our priorities. If you truly desire a second rate society of “information” workers, if you truly believe that this country is merely a corporate resource to be disdained if the money is too dear and that only the “right” people should have a say in what happens, this educational system is perfect for you.
This is the United States of American. We can do better.
James Alan Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
I couldn’t agree more! I was contemplating this while I went for a run. Usually, when I run, my thought process tends to be a series of tangents that just go off to nowhere, but occasionally, those tangents make a full circle. Tonight was one of those nights.
I look at our country and I see how big she is. Then I see the massive effort being … See Moremade to integrate and centralize such a large country. I think this leads to these “one size fits all” definitions of success that was fed to us since we were 5 years old. The problem is that this pre-defined notion of success does not work for everyone. It never has, and it never will.
It is analogous, in my opinion, to the idea of the “credit score”. I’m sickened by the idea that my moral character is boiled down to a three digit number. In your previous posts, you said that the “Good ol’ Days” werent so good. I generally agree with that statement. I think one good thing about the past was that the moral character of a man actually MEANT more back then than it does today. Back before globalization, when things were less convenient, people were forced to rely on each other more. You literally needed your neighbors help with certain tasks. In return, you were expected to be there to help your neighbor. You actually had to know your fellow man.
Nowadays, we are so many and so large that there is no way to know all of the character of all the men you do business with. That anonymity has forced us to boil down the integrity of a man to a three digit number. Its no wonder that ethical behavior seems to be declining nowadays. No one needs to be truly ethical. As long as that three digit number reads high, that’s all that matters to make it good in this world.
The problem with education is the same problem with the ethics in this country. I think we are just too many and those in charge have no real incentive to devise a system that actually works. Its much easier to try and force everyone into a “one size fits all” policy.
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No Child Left Behind is a travesty. I most definitely agree with you – we can do better.
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