I was digging through the mountain of backpack papers last week when I came across a note from the principal exhorting us to provide opportunities for our children to work on important skills. What important skills? you might ask. High-powered math skills? Sophisticated reading skills? Strong people skills?
Nope. The important skill in question is taking multiple-choice tests. She wants us to tell our kids to spend their free time on a website that lets them practice for the next round of standardized tests.
To which my first response was, Are you HIGH? Are you sitting in your office SMOKING CRACK?
My second response was a little more temperate: I get that she's under pressure here. Our kids' performance on those tests is viewed as a statement about her performance as principal, and who doesn't want to perform well?
Have I mentioned lately how much I hate No Child Left Behind? No? My friends, I hate No Child Left Behind.
Only about 60% of what I want my children to learn before adulthood is something that can be measured on a multiple-choice test. I want them to learn math, yes, but I want them to have fun with numbers -- to be excited about the possibilities and to play with different ways of finding answers. You can do that only if you're not under the gun to finish a certain number of problems in a specified amount of time. Of course I want them to be able to read a passage and parse its meaning, both surface and subtext, but more than that I want them to love reading. I want them to dive undaunted into the Iliad, and be both stirred by the courage they see there and a little put off by the blood-drenched details. The great epics don't lend themselves to multiple-choice testing. ("When Dido realized Aeneas was gone, she was (a) sad (b) relieved (c) indifferent (d) wrathful." Inadequate, much?) In the current climate, that means short shrift for the epics. Kids have to be prepared for the multiple-choice tests, you know, because those are "important skills."
If multiple-choice tests had much to do with the rest of life, my husband and I would rule the world. Or at least be in the Imperial Cabinet -- we're both good at standardized tests. But I am thinking about our recent conversation in the bathroom, where we were grouching about the broken shower valve. I opted to turn my shower into a bath. He said, "If you wait a little while [shivering in the halfhearted trickle] it gets better." Fat lot of good those GRE scores are doing us in the face of a real-world problem.
Complex problem-solving (in whatever domain), nuanced critique of difficult ideas, fearless enthusiasm in the face of new material, lifelong intellectual curiosity -- that's what I hope my kids gain from formal education. NCLB erodes the truly important skills in the name of "tough standards." There isn't time for exploration, because they have to learn to fill in the right Scantron bubbles.
GRE scores notwithstanding, I am not Queen of the World or even her Secretary of Education. I am not optimistic about my ability to make changes in federal law. But I am queen of my castle and here is my ukase: my children will not be visiting the test-prep website.
They have football games to play with the neighbor kids. They have books to read, perhaps curled up on the floor by the heating vent and laughing out loud, or perhaps sprawled on the loveseat, chewing a knuckle in anticipation. They have noodling around on the piano to do, and castles to build and stories to write and Lego Star Wars missions to complete. (BTW, do any kids in this country really need more screen time? I fight that battle often enough -- I don't need the principal telling me to give them more computer time.) The current emphasis on standardized tests has sucked enough real learning and fun from their days. They will not be spending their free time drilling. They have more important things to do.
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