What does it mean to be well educated?
A very good question suggested by Alfie Kohn. He goes into detail pertaining many different ideas to change the educational system to make children learn the appropriate material, but a few things really stuck out to me.
In the section "Confusing Hard with Better", he says,
"...But how many adults could pass these exams? How any high school teachers possess the requisite stock of information outside their own subjects? How many college professors, for that matter, or business executives, or state legislators could confidently write an essay about Mayan agricultural practices or divergent plate boundaries? We would do will to adopt (Deborah) Meier's Mandate: No student should be expected to meet an academic requirement that a cross section of successful adults in the community cannot."
While he is talking about certain lessons, lets say a history or geography teacher might teach, I think this can also be applied to standardized testing. I, for one, am not a big fan of No Child Left Behind. This may be due to the fact that I am an art education major and NCLB does not help students learn about my field of study and teaching, but also the fact that children are force fed information to keep the school funded, while the studies that they may love, like art, music, foreign language, is pushed to the side. This coincides with his statement, "Are they trying to get children to memorize a "bunch o' facts (priming them for entry into the vast corporate machine as un-opinionated drones) or are they trying to allow children to explore ideas, learn to love learning, as challenging, difficult questions, and become deep-thinking capable adults."
He also mentions his distaste for private schools. At first, I thought his judgment was biased or out of line, but after reading what he had to say about them, I began to see it from his point of view. He talks about how private school can choose from an array of students and pick which ones are their type, so to speak, and can just as easily expel them if they fall from their model status. I, myself, understand the appeal to private schools. Private schools are usually filled with children whose parents are very religious or wealthy enough to pay for that type of education. However, once that child falls below a certain line, the school doesn't have to try and help, they can just expel? Private school isn't looking as promising as I thought it would be for a child. They also can set certain rules and standards that not every parent may be too keen on their child following. But I guess that is the price you have to pay to send your child to an infamous private school.
The rest of the book brought up some interesting topics, like his opposition to the grading system which I agree and disagree with, but these two topics of private school and testing really came to my attention.
