Frank wrote:
Jaguar wrote:
grateful wrote:
It's official: The Republican Party of Texas opposes critical thinking. That's right, drones, and it's part of their official platform:
"Knowledge-Based Education ? We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student?s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."
http://www.austinchronicle.com/blogs/news/2012-06-27/gop-opposes-critical-thinking/
Forget the Republican/Democratic angle of this. Believe me, canning this is a good thing and I can hear the teachers (both Republican and Democrat) applauding this decision all over and hoping it comes their way. I am fully aware how absurd this sounds to the average ear but it means nothing whatsoever as it does in real life English language. This program is so convoluted and bizarre that what it did most was prevent learning. Forget any real critical thinking, it wasn't there. They make the teacher change the wording of any objectives and such that end up having nothing whatsoever to do with proper grammar. It was based on some made up idea of arranging wording that did not in anyway carry over into real life understanding. There were times when it was impossible to do it based on their made up rules where it made any sense whatsoever to the either the teachers or the students. But the teachers were usually forced to follow them anyway and then quietly explain them to the students in regular English so that the students knew what they were supposed to do. In most cases, the program did nothing whatsoever to aide in learning; however, it did plenty to prevent any sort of common sense learning. Good riddance!
If they made competence in the English language a requirement to attend public school the grade levels in America would sky-rocket. It's r-e-t-a-r-d-e-d that a teacher has to stand in front of a class of kids, a large percentage of which only speak Spanish or Creole (that's the case in in south FL anyway).
If a kid doesn't speak English, and English language class seems like a pretty logical idea…….no?
"No child left behind" is really "Bring all the kids down to the lowest common demoninator"
I've always said that the theme song for that bogus 'No Child Left Behind' program, that you so rightly understand, is Ride's 'Leave Them All Behind'.
In reality, way too many of these programs are about dumbing down our kids rather them truly educating them. Number 682 on my list of reasons of why I quit teaching. In many of these systems, it's not even teaching anymore. Instead, it has more to do with corralling and babysitting than what one would assume. In fact, my last year of teaching, we had someone from the State tell us that teachers falsely assume that the main goal of teaching was 'critical thinking' (but not the Orwellian type in the program design mentioned above.) Hey, because that's what they (the State) use to tell us. He admitted to us that they could not care less about that. Instead, he said that the ONLY thing they cared about was that these kids would show up to work once they got out in the work force. That's it. Period. That they show up. Actually, that was pretty evident from what we witnessed within the schools themselves. That they showed up. Nothing else.
Now I can't say that all schools or systems are like that. There are way too many of them out there to believe that they are such cookie cutters and I do know that there are still some good ones left. I can only say that the the schools I was in perfectly fit the devolution totally dumbed down minimum security prison type of warehousing that is no good at all for anyone. I would never, ever allow my child to set foot in such halls of horror. In fact, I'd home school if all else failed. At least they'd have a chance at learning something productive.
By the way, except for maybe one or two teachers that I knew, they were all democrats and they all hated this program with a deep passion because they knew how ass backwards and ineffective it was. Anyone who thinks this is a dem/rep issue is being mislead and hasn't a clue what they are talking about.