can we make adults go to school?

     Can we make adults go to school? Probably not. Perhaps if they are in prison, but I'm not sure that the prisons have the capacity to test for literacy, or to force remedial schooling on the incarcerated. If the prisons do not have the capacity to test for literacy and enforce attendance in class, they should be given the capacity. If they do have the capacity to test for literacy and enforce class attendance, they are failing miserably.
     People spend 10 years in jail, and re-enter society completely illiterate. People spend 10 years ( or 20 years ) in jail and still can't tell time when they get out--or make a sandwich, or tie their shoes, or catch a bus, or use the laundromat. They can't eat anything but takeout--they don't know how.
     If we're not spending money to teach basic literacy and life skills to prisoners, let's spend it. If we are spending the money, let's find out what the prisons are doing with it.

edubabble

     The phrase "teaching to test" is repeated as if it were a bad thing to test students on what has been taught. Wrong. It would be a bad thing to test students on what has not been taught--for instance, to spend weeks talking about what everyone did on vacation, and then test students on material that should have been covered during the vacation discussions.
     As for teaching just to improve scores on standardized tests ( achievement tests ), this is probably not possible. The teacher might drill students all day in vocabulary and basic math skills, and that might, or should, improve standardized test scores. But since the teacher doesn't know what the questions on the standardized test are going to be, this could not really be "teaching to test". Drilling in vocabulary and math would be a vast improvement, anyway, on drilling in "imagination and creativity"--which are not covered on standardized tests.
    The emphasis a teacher places on "imagination and creativity" may be meant to hide the teacher's own lack of basic skills--especially when "imagination and creativity" seem to be taking the place of education.

where did the "learn" meme go?

     I sat down to read a month's worth of articles on education I had saved for later--these from the new York Times. The word learn wasn't used once.This is part of a trend sorely in need of correction. We have those who believe that children are either "gifted" academically, or not "gifted". We have those who believe that educational success is genetically determined. We have those who believe that answers to factual questions will come to them through meditation and prayer--not because they are trying to calm down and remember what they learned, but as a substitute for the learning that didn't happen. Not the learning they didn't do. The learning that didn't happen.
     The only sense in which education is hereditary is that educated people tend to insist that their children do their schoolwork--and they know that there is work involved. Absent this notion, every attempt to provide an adequate education to every American is bound to fail.

creative ignorance

     I'd like to add something to the seemingly endless discussion of helping children to be more imaginative and creative. What too many young people need is not more creativity and imagination, but a  thorough enough grounding in reality (facts, if you will) to be able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.  I have been told, at various times, that no one eats anything that comes from a farm except for a few survivalist extremists. I have been told (by a standard burger-eating American) that people don't eat cows. I have been told that when movies show people riding horses, living in log cabins, wearing armor, wearing long dresses, or using candles and fireplaces that this is all pretend--because everything in the movies is pretend, even in historical epics. If a teacher stands in front of a classroom and tells the students that people once used candles for light, at least a few of them will think that the teacher is ignorant, and doesn't know that movies are pretend. Their attitude is that the teacher is trying to teach them that there are space aliens about to invade--including eye-rolling and smirks. They have apparently also been taught that it would be hopeless to argue with such a person, so there is little discussion.


Suggestion--find out where students are learning this and intervene--even if it's their parents.