Deducation: Repeal the No Child Left Behind Act
Friday, March 09, 2007
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is, perhaps
outside of the PATRIOT Act, potentially the most
damaging and far reaching legacy of the Bush
administration. It applies misguided notions of how
kids learn and how to teach them to further a
conservative agenda that will guarantee our students
will graduate with little more than a mass of
irrelevant, testable, and ultimately wrong "facts"
and have not the least clue how to think. It believes
in tests, it tests the wrong things, it rewards those
who score highly on these wrong-headed tests. The
damage it has done, and continues to do, to our
nation's children is incalculable. It may take
generations to undo this.
Our educational system is being killed: it's almost dead. Deducation, I call it. Mind-numbing, teaching to invalid tests, memorization of facts that won't be facts tomorrow, stifling all ability to think critically, taking all teaching decisions out of the hands of teachers, funneling educational funds into the best white schools, leaving behind all children except upper class whites. Repeal the NCLB today and put education back in the hands of people who know what they are doing.
Our educational system is being killed: it's almost dead. Deducation, I call it. Mind-numbing, teaching to invalid tests, memorization of facts that won't be facts tomorrow, stifling all ability to think critically, taking all teaching decisions out of the hands of teachers, funneling educational funds into the best white schools, leaving behind all children except upper class whites. Repeal the NCLB today and put education back in the hands of people who know what they are doing.
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