public education (FAPE). Driven by the first wave of the post–WWII baby boom, young people marched in protest of the Vietnam War, pushed hard against the edicts of society and their parents, demanded voting rights legislation, and sought a vision of schooling as emancipatory and supportive. Much was accomplished, but eras don’t last forever, and as many have said, we rested too soon. What followed is the current era and a fixation on standards, accountability, and testing.
One thing about testing is its ability to reduce human beings into numbers, which in turn become data. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 ushered in a vehement, long-lasting rebuttal to the previous decades of reform. Reagan’s A Nation at Risk Report, one of the first written with sound bites for newscasts in mind, declared that “if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war” (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). What the report called “mediocre” was that test scores had gone down overall, precisely because test scores among all the previously excluded groups that were now included had themselves gone up dramatically. Data-driven school reform has been big business for decades now, largely as a result of the dramatic policy shifts articulated in Reagan’s report. Young people graduating from high school today are among the most tested generations in human history. School reform proposals are almost exclusively judged by the extent to which they reflect data, and data rationalizes day-to-day practice on even the most microscopic levels. The result is a decades-long withering away of all school curricula that don’t test well—music, dance, theatre, and even history and science all receive a back seat on the priority list for school reformers. Recess and naps are now the exception rather than the rule for kindergartners and first graders. Children are now working on material in kindergarten and first grade that they used to start doing in second and third grade. Knowledge is imparted in bite-sized pieces and assessed in multiple-choice exams while the trajectory of students’ lives is decided by the results of eighth-grade math examinations.
The essays in this book all enter into this conversation in different ways and on different subjects. Pick any topic, from homework requirements, grouping students by age, or separating subject disciplines to the questions about why girls are underrepresented in math and science or boys shun English and writing, trace that idea through time, and you will come up with the same reflection of our history. To ignore the influence of our past while trying to reform the present ensures that we may unwittingly perpetuate beliefs about human capacity that are not our own. We may reject many of the ideas we encounter in our study of history, but to then determine you will reject history altogether is an approach doomed to fail if your intent is to think outside the ideas you are rejecting. To ignore history is to be harnessed by ideological structures that have governed the lives and the education of each of us. Learning to think outside these imposed structures requires that we pay close attention and study with a critical eye, but it also requires a leap of faith and asks that we operate in a kind of suspended animation between past and present. The faith is in unlimited human capacity, in instinct, insight, acceptance, and in an approach modeled by the love you have for your own family and friends. Your challenge will not be easy, especially when for generations we have been trained to view all knowledge as either right or wrong. On behalf of future generations, it is worth it to continue to strive toward an analysis of the present that fully accounts for, yet is not defined by, the past.
Reference
National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: Author.
Part I Why Teach?
Students file into a crowded lecture hall at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast. The class, Foundations of Education, is a prerequisite for acceptance into the School of Education program, and it is enrolled at maximum capacity. It is the first day of class. Students are expecting that the syllabus for the course will be distributed and read aloud, and if no one asks any questions about the requirements of the class, then the students can cut out early and enjoy the warm September sunshine. After all, nobody bought the book yet.
The professor arrives and greets the students.
“Good morning. So, you are all interested in becoming teachers? Wonderful. We need bright, energetic, young teachers in the profession today. Teaching can be a very rewarding career, but I must warn you that it is a challenging time for teachers, especially beginning teachers. Teachers are under tremendous scrutiny. There are also increasing concerns about the deplorable condition of our schools, the lack of parental support, the disturbing behavior of the children, and the general disrespect for teachers by the public at large. So, why teach?”
A long silence fills the hall.
“This is not a rhetorical question. Tell us, why do you want to teach?”
More silence . . . long silence.
Finally, Jennifer offers, “My mom is a teacher. So is my aunt. I guess I have grown up around teaching, and ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to teach, too.”
Then Erin says, “I just love kids. Like, I just want to make a difference in their lives. I want to teach elementary school. The kids are so cute at that age.”
Robert adds, “I work as a camp counselor in the summers. My cabin always wins the camp contest. I really connect with kids. I mean, I just know what they like. It is not so hard, plus teachers have summers off.”
Sound good? Do Jennifer, Erin, and Robert have it right? Are these reasons to teach?
Chapter 1 My Need to Teach
Deanna Rochefort
A day in the life of a teacher is difficult to adequately describe. At times I will feel as though my sanity is hanging by a thread as I question whether the job of teaching is really worth doing when my paycheck is minuscule. The balancing act of trying to please everyone while doing what is best for my students will overwhelm me and seem impossible. I will have sleepless nights spent worrying about my students and weekends consumed with grading papers and writing lesson plans. The needs of my students will be numerous and different, but I will have to find a way to meet them all. This will result in hectic days as I try my best to maintain order. Scrutiny of my teaching will frequently come from those who know nothing of its challenges. I will be told to teach in ways that do not match what is best for my students. Standardized tests will loom over me as a deciding factor that determines my worth as a teacher. Parents may be quick to place the blame on me for their child’s failures, but they won’t know that I may already blame myself. There will also be times where I think quitting would be easier because the task of teaching just seems like too much to bear. And yet I want to teach. I need to teach.
Source: © Deanna Rochefort. Reprinted with permission.
Despite all the challenges of teaching, there are dedicated teachers who spend countless hours helping children prepare for their futures. Those on the outside looking in will frequently question why these individuals are teachers. Sometimes, even for the most dedicated teacher, answering the question of why they teach can be difficult. My answer to this question has evolved the more I’ve learned about teaching. I started out years ago as a person who would have told you to avoid teaching at all costs. I would have told you this despite my own desire to teach. I had been conditioned to focus on the negatives of teaching and to see it as a career for those who couldn’t do anything else. After four years in the Marine Corps, I realized that going to college for a degree in something that I wouldn’t actually enjoy would be a waste of my time so I ignored the naysayers and applied to colleges to pursue a degree in education. I entered college majoring in early childhood education with the idea that I
