[regional_school] Re: Steve Nelson

  • From: Neilcho <neilcho@xxxxxxx>
  • To: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:44:23 -0500 (EST)

If it were up to Socrates, that question would be answered by another question. 
Neil

 

 


 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Rankin <keithwrankin@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Regional School <regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Mon, Dec 13, 2010 9:47 am
Subject: [regional_school] Re: Steve Nelson


I wonder in the History of Education how many "standardized tests" or 
"authentic assessments" Socrates gave?

Keith


Keith W. Rankin 
44 Creston Court 
Rochester, NY 14612 

585.734.7295 cel | txt





 



From: wcala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [regional_school] Steve Nelson
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2010 07:48:13 -0500


An interesting piece by Steve Nelson via Norm Scott from NYC.
 


Excerpts from Steve Nelson's The Disservice of a 'Rigorous' Education 

Tests, standards, accountability, economic competitiveness, managers, vouchers, 
data, metrics... does anyone actually care about children? 

While multi-billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates and Eli Broad talk 
about tough management and data-driven reform, real children languish in abject 
poverty. That's unfair enough, but then we also rob them of their childhoods. 
Everything is about money, even their small lives. Social scientists talk about 
poor kids' education as an "investment" and act as though the worth of children 
is in their development as resources for the competitive marketplace. 

Jean De La Bruyère, a 17th century French moralist and philosopher, once wrote: 
"Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present -- 
which seldom happens to us." In the South Bronx or in Grosse Pointe, children 
are too often deprived of the present. At each end of the economic spectrum, we 
are pressing children harder and harder in the service of a "rigorous" 
education. It is not mere semantic coincidence that the word "rigor" is most 
often paired with the word "mortis." 

As De La Bruyère wrote, the present seldom happens to us. But the present is 
all that children have. 

It's heartbreaking to hear administrators and politicians talk about children 
as raw material to be crafted into productive cogs in the global economy. 
Read it all: http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_atrocities.php?id=4072 


                                          
 

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