Why Can't We Accept That Our Society Needs Its Teachers to Teach for The Test? [View all]

[truedelphi]

There may have been a day when the public needed to learn critical thinking, and also needed to learn how to judge if an activity was or wasn't moral.

But those days are long gone. We no longer have the luxury of letting people think for themselves.

Our TV Station Execs have gone along with the program nicely. We no longer have the morality plays with life lessons taught by such situations as The Cartwrights supporting an immigrant family in "Bonanza," or Sheriff Andy of Mayberry letting Opie know that it is very wrong to tape record the conversation of prisoners. In fact, in that one episode of "The Andy Griffith Show," Opie's dad wisely explains the meaning of the Fourth Amendment - and this all happened during Prime Time, back in the day.

However, things are quite different now. The One Percent is totally aware that you can't have an Orwellian society, complete with Total Surveillance, and with little difference between the goals of leadership in Both Parties, if the average people in the society remain in control of critical thought processes, and are supported by the nightly narratives on TV. So these days, instead of dramas and sit coms with actual story lines, and moral resolutions, we see instead how TV station after TV station has made sure that most programs are pablum.

Few if any moral lessons are contained in the program "The Bachelor," and even fewer moral lessons are learned by the endless hijinks of the Kardashians.

"Repo" this and "Repo" go on air as well, that let us know that should you be a worm who falls behind in your bills, the repo squad will come for you, and it won't be pretty. On the bright side, when that unemployment check stops coming, you can always hock whatever family heirlooms you have held onto, and should you manage to get a break from the pawn shop owner, your family might have housing for a month or a week longer.

Against this backdrop of idle show times, celebrity nonsense, and mental carelessness, one group of Chicago school teachers is fighting an uphill fight. Apparently they never got the memo about how our kids need to be kept continually dumbed down.

http://chicagoist.com/2014/02/28/teachers_stand_ground_refuse_to_adm.php

Teachers who refuse to administer the ISAT or who encourage students to not take it could face the loss of their state education certification.

"Illinois Federation of Teachers president Dan Montgomery called the ISAT "testing for testing's sake."

“The preparation and administration of this test brings teaching to a halt and robs students of valuable time to learn. The ISAT is not appropriately aligned to curriculum and forces educators to teach to an unnecessary test that is defunct and has absolutely no practical use... (W)e encourage parents to work with their teachers to opt out. We also strongly encourage CPS to reconsider their plans to punish teachers for doing the right thing. IFT members around the state salute and stand with these teachers and parents as they stand up for their students.”
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The full article is at this link below, but please don't back away from the scheduled TV shows that are our nation's mediocrity's life blood. After all, this article can be read at your leisure, like whenever "Hoarders" or "Wife Swap" are not on.

http://chicagoist.com/2014/02/28/teachers_stand_ground_refuse_to_adm.php