Quotes from "The Shame of the Nation" by Jonathan Kozol Chapter 5, "American Education" by Joel Spring Chapter 5, and "Educational Foundations" by Alan S. Canestrari and Bruce A. Marlowe Chapters 5 and 6

 Kozol Page 112

“Most Americans whose children aren’t in public school have little sense of the inordinate authority that now is granted to these standardized exams and, especially within the inner-city schools, the time the tests subtract from actual instruction.”

At P.S. 65, Kozol tells us that 5^th grade teachers must put aside all lesson plans from 8:40 to 11:00 a.m. and from 1:45 to 3:00 every day for three months prior to the testing date for lessons on studying for the exams.  In addition to that, students must stay from 3:00 to 5:00 two afternoons a week and come in on Saturdays for three hours for the remaining four weeks before the test.  This test preparation is not only taking time away from school lessons, but it is taking time away from students’ down-time at home and time at home to do their homework, projects or do any outside learning. School is supposed to be a fun learning environment. Are the students learning abstract things, or are they only learning how to take a test.  School is supposed to help build our character and help to form us into the people we will later be when we enter into the adult world.  If these schools are teaching only to a test, are these children learning anything other than to be fearful, stressed and worried about a score they receive on a test?  To make matters worse, the children were told that passing these tests were the most important thing.  On top of the large amounts of time they spend studying for it in school, more stress flows through them putting pressure on them to be the best and score the best scores they can.  These students have a fear put in them by school teachers and administrators to pass this test or otherwise they won’t succeed.  This amount of stress can actually end up causing a student’s grades to be worse on a test instead of better because the more pressure someone has on them, the more nervous they are and the worse they tend to do (although this is not true for everyone, it is for many).  Why is it that teachers and administrators think that the students will actually do better when they have this much stress on them? Kozol states that administrators use these tests so that the teacher’s can get a better idea of where their students are, learning wise, throughout the year.  Why is it that teachers aren’t expected to assess daily classroom behaviors and work to get a better idea of where their students are in their learning process? Wouldn’t the daily interactions give more of an insight into who the children really are, without the stress and anxiety of having to take a bug test that they are told it is most important to pass?  Kozol’s citation of Deborah Meier on page 117 fits this perfectly, ““For a teacher who sees a kid day in and day out to admit that she won’t know how well he reads” until the day the test scores are delivered by an outside agency “is not good news.””

Kozol page 122

“Teachers also are awarded bonus pay in many districts if their students make impressive gains, a policy that has its parallel in sales incentives in the business world and has been in place at various times in recent years in parts of Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, California, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere.”

Stress is not only put on the students who are taking these tests, but it is also put on the principals and teachers administering them. When schools don’t reach the target scores that they are supposed to, they are put on probation after a few years of not reaching the target score, schools are shut down (among other things). This is a stress that is added to the everyday stress that is already on teachers and principals.  Our job as teachers is to help our students to learn everything they can to the best of their abilities in a safe and happy environment that best suits the child.  If our teachers and principals are so worried about reaching the target scores, how can they worry about each student like they should be?  I feel like putting this money incentive onto reaching the target scores may cause some principals to work harder, but it would be for the wrong reasons. At this point, it is no longer to help the children reach their maximum learning capacity, but it is to push students hard and fast, no matter what it does to them, just so they can have some money sitting in their pockets.  Our school system is looking more and more like a business with sales incentives to “get the higher score”.  In the long run, I wonder how this will affect our school systems. If our schools continue to be test-driven, wheat will our schools look like 10,20 or 50 years down the road.

 Spring page 127

“Multicultural education is considered important for all students”

Spring stresses the fact the teaching all students about many different cultures will help to students to better recognize and accept the differences between the people of different cultures. Giving this widespread teaching on different cultures may actually help to decrease the amount of racism that is in our society today. One of the most important things it teaches is that differences are ok and that just because someone/something is different, it doesn’t mean that it is bad or that they should think badly of it.  I feel like this lack of knowledge, this ignorance of other cultures, is the main reason for all of the racism today.  If the amount of racism is lessened, then the fact that segregation exists may actually be seen as true for more and more people. I wonder how our society would change if there was more awareness. Would things actually change towards integration, or would the stereotypes that are in today’s society still stick with people, leaving no room for change.

Spring page 129

“White students… often struggle with strong feelings of guilt when they become aware of the pervasiveness of racism…  These feelings are uncomfortable and can lead white students to resist learning about race and racism.”

When white students are taught about racism, they are taught that most of it is caused by the white race, and it is.  Many people, children especially, have a difficult time responding to that fact because it has a lot of weight-bearing truth to it.  It is hard to think that as a race, people can do so much harm to another race.  When learning about this, students may become overwhelmed by it.  Children don’t like knowing that they did something wrong because they feel bad.  When a child finds out that their race has caused things like segregation in the south, etc, they may feel just as bad about it despite the fact that they didn’t personally do it.  As teachers, our job is to try and teach our students about racism without pointing fingers at individual students.  If our students still take this topic personally, how are we supposed to teach them about it? Is there a way that we can teach them about it without making them feel guilty for what has happened?  If these children end up feeling guilty, they probably won’t want to learn about it at all.  Therefore, we must introduce the subject in a way so that the students understand what is happening in the world today and instead of them ending up turning off to it, helping them to want to change it.  What should we do as teachers if our students never want to hear about the issues of racism again because of their feelings of guilt, how do we respond to that? The minds of children are innocent and frail, and everything that they learn this young will have a major impact on who they are as they grow up.  It is our job to try and make sure that the impacts are good instead of bad. 

Marlowe page 35

“I will submit that one of the reasons (Ebonics) is a problem, if you will- a controversy- is that you cannot divorce language from its speakers.”

I like what Marlowe says about how you cannot be for or against Ebonics because it is not an item that can be debated over.  It is a language that is spoken by some African American people in the United States.  Trying to stop anyone from speaking Ebonics is stifling them from being who they are as a person, as a living part of their own culture.  It is wrong to stop someone from being themselves.  Marlowe also makes a good point when he says that students do need to learn standard English to get by successfully in today’s world because, unfortunately, they will not be able to get anywhere in the working world if they don’t at least know it.  This is not guaranteeing that they will succeed because they know it, but if they don’t know it they will fail.  However, just because they must know how to speak standard English does not mean they must speak it at all times.  They should still have their own culture and live their own culture because that is who they are.  As teachers, if we try and change the language of our students, we will end up turning our students against us, as Marlowe says. We must support and welcome different cultures into our classroom and allow our students to be who they are being raised to be based off of their own culture because that is how they will be the most comfortable in our classroom.  Trying to stop them may actually make the environment one in which the students may become hostile and angry and therefore not want to learn from the teacher.  Why is it that so many teachers don’t understand that Ebonics is a part of a way of life for people and is something that can’t be changed?  Why, as part of the Caucasian race, do we feel we have the right to change people and force them to be like us? 

Marlowe page 45

“Our society, among many others, categorizes people according to both visible and invisible traits, uses such classifications to deduce fixed behavioral and mental traits, and then applies policies and practices that jeopardize some and benefit others.”

Why do certain groups of people feel the need to be higher than others and try and dictate who others are or who they should be?  Stereotypes are not things that we are born with or automatically think, they are something that we hear and learn from our surrounding s as we grow up. These stereotypes only end up alienating cultures and causing larger gaps between races.  These stereotypes are formed because one race feels that they are better than another.  Living in America, the reason for most of today’s racism issues stems from “white supremacy.”  As a people, Caucasians are blessed with more privileges than any other race in our country.  These privileges lead to a feeling of superiority, which leads to the stereotypes and racism that exists in our country today. Is it an innate instinct within us that always look toward another person and throws judgments at them?  Do we naturally feel the need to be above someone else? Can we, as one large group of people, ever find a way to nit set stereotypes about other people, or are we “doomed” to this evil nature?