Sunday, February 13, 2011

We Need Clear Goals for Our Education System and Citizen Activists for Our Country

For a decade now, we've been trying to improve an education system in America that we know falls short in a variety of ways.  But as we "Race to Nowhere" while "Waiting for Superman," we seem to increase the value of standardized testing as a means of evaluating our students, schools and teachers without really knowing what our real goals are.  How will we know when we have created a truly excellent system for the 21st century?  Are we merely looking to teach students how to do well on standardized tests?  Do the tests assess what we truly value?  Or do they often lower the bar, creating minimum standards and then encouraging teachers to teach to the test and abandon what they know is "best practice"?

Are we really looking to just increase graduation rates?  How can that be a meaningful statistic if we don't know what we want kids to know and be able to do if and when they do graduate?

A hundred years ago, our education system was geared toward teaching kids how to be prepared for jobs working in factories, and how to be citizens in a democracy.  Well, we don't have many factory jobs left in the US, and the standardized tests I've seen - and I've seen plenty - don't assess a student's ability to be an effective citizen.

So what do we want kids to know and be able to do?  There has been a lot written and discussed about teaching kids "21st century skills," and I do agree with much of it.  But there hasn't been enough done to help teachers actually teach those skills or figure out how to assess them.  And, meanwhile, the national obsession with standardized testing largely runs counter to that effort.  In the absence of clear goals, however, getting kids to do better on these tests - and to fare better in tests that compare kids in the US with their overseas peers - will drive spending and reform efforts.

I, for one, am increasingly convinced that my job as a social studies teacher is to teach kids how to be effective citizens in the 21st century.  I want them to understand how and why a democracy needs the active participation of its citizens, how individual citizens and groups of concerned Americans have made an enormous difference in our country's past, solving long-term problems and urgent crises.  I want them to have the skills to research issues and problems effectively, to learn the relevant lessons from history, and to weigh the evidence and possible solutions so they can decide for themselves what should be done.  I want them to know how to take that knowledge and put it into action - how to be a citizen activist.  How do you participate in a democracy in the 21st century?  How do you get your fellow citizens to care about an issue and support your cause?  How do you get your government to address the problems you care about and take actions you believe are necessary for the common good?

The people of Tunisia and Egypt showed us this past month how even under repressive regimes people can make a difference and bring about real change.  In a democracy like ours, it should be even easier.  Indeed, throughout our history, average Americans have made an enormous difference, in spite of the control big money has had on our politics since the 1800s.  But we need to teach our kids how to be agents of change, how to take responsibility for their country and government.

If we feel a need to measure our success toward that end, can we?  Well, I'd love to hear some ideas from fellow educators and other concerned Americans, but for starters, we could measure our success by how many 18-30 year olds vote in each election, how many student protests there are a year, how many 18-30 year olds write or visit their member of Congress, etc.  In our classrooms, we can assess the skills and know-how pretty easily.  Kids can write to their member of Congress, propose legislation and constitutional amendments, blog, post on Twitter, write letters or op-eds for their local newspapers, create action plans on important local, national, or global issues.

Please let me hear from you.  What should our other goals be?

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