Friday, May 17, 2013

The Culture of Suspicion in America's Schools.



Because children do not dream of becoming obedient workers for America's largest corporations, a culture of suspicion now dominates American education. From Pre-K on, educators are being asked to identifying signs of apathy, indifference, rebelliousness, or fantasy life in children and punish, drill or drug these traits out of them so they can absorb and regurgitate the information required to make them " college and career ready." This instrumentalist view of education, institutionalized in the Common CORE standards, marginalizes imagination and play and only legitimizes art, music and exercise if they can be converted into verifiable results. "Rigor" is the guiding word and under its umbrella childhood is being stolen from students as young as 4 or 5. 

Think of what is going on. In our schools, children are being asked to justify their existence in term of their value to the government and the nation's largest corporations. They no longer belong to their parents, but worse of all, they no longer belong to themselves! They are being denied the space to chart their own paths--to explore, to dream, to stumble, to fall, to love and to create. I hate to use a cliche, but this to me, looks like fascism

There. I said it. Take a good look at what is going on in our schools and tell me I am wrong.

1 comment:

Lauren said...

Watch this video. Tell me it is not turning out good Nazis. This is what they are using in inner city charters. But don't worry, the tested it at schools for severely emotionally and mentally disturbed kids and juvenile prisons. That's what they are comparing low income students to. http://petersprocedures.com/7mvideoB.html
Peters Procedures Video
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