If It's Broken Don't Fix It

If It’s Broken, Don’t Fix It

A Candid Look at Our Complacent Education System

Mr. Noriega

Copyright © S Noriega, 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Penguie Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Also available on paperback: ISBN 978-0615901756

1. Learning. 2. Education--United States. I. Title.

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To my sweetheart Bunny, because she drives me to reach further, to inspire, to motivate, to reach beyond the standards, and do better when others won’t. Because she believes in what I believe: a better way.

Also to my students, and children, whom I hope will always stay young.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Crisis

Chapter 2 The Learning Doppelganger

Chapter 3 Teaching the Test

Chapter 4 NCLB

Chapter 5 This is a Business

Chapter 6 Self-Preservation

Chapter 7 Accountable to Whom

Chapter 8 The Hypocrisy of the Philosophy

Chapter 9 Daughters of the Harlot

Chapter 10 The Common Core

Chapter 11 Come to Life

Bibliography

About The Author

Introduction

I am a teacher, and have been teaching for many years at many different school districts in the Southwest. I have taught at alternative schools, public schools, charters, and even in prison. What I have found is that the philosophies of each district are basically the same. Districts adopt exceptional ideals on paper, but never expect to implement those principles in the real world. Hypocritically, they say what they don’t mean, and choose to ignore the fundamental reasons that are at the heart of our failing education system.

There is a reason why our nation’s youth are falling far below average; other nations surpass and better prepare their children for the world of tomorrow. Districts are businesses whose self-geared motivations gravitate around test scores. They front a facade of ideals, but condemn their schools to mediocrity, through a system of overregulation, governed by political boards that manage affairs in circular bureaucracies. A redirected focus, away from education, has led to sweeping bandage fixes that have come far short of solving any problems.

Nevertheless, there is a solution. We need to redirect our focus back towards deep-seated values of education, no matter the consequences. We need to decide what those values are because percentage alone is only the shadow of that ultimate goal.

I have often found that those who take major strides towards reform quickly find adversity descending upon them. I have seen too many programs begin to make a difference, then be shut down because they caused too many waves. Teachers and administrators, who chose to implement high ideals, philosophies, and practices, often find they become the target in a system that never intended to have better teaching practices put into action. These dreamers stand alone, in a world of challenge, on the sword’s edge of employment, because they believe in something greater than the outcome of a test. They believe that learning is something more than a systematic breakdown of dull mechanics. They believe that learning is an assent towards discovery, where the reward is the learning, rather than the score.

School administrators constantly produce new and creative approaches to spend more money, while any average reading American can see the flawed irony of throwing dollar signs towards a system that is failing us in a dying economy.

How does this happen? How do we spend so much to do so little for our youth? The truth is that the intention of teaching has been lost and is now focused around a counterfeit, degenerated form of learning. The true message in its simplicity is absent from our schools. As teachers, we are there to teach, to facilitate the learning, or at least to get out of the way of the learning that is taking place. But it is the learning that has been forgotten, and been replaced by the test, and we as an American public have been swindled, manipulated, and conditioned to believe that this new bastard way is actually learning—when all it is is a standardized test.

I wish to reeducate the system and teach it what learning really is. It seems a simple enough concept to grasp. What is learning? We know what it should look like, so let’s start doing it. Let’s start teaching the pure joy of learning.

Mr. Noriega

Chapter 1

The Crisis

Have you ever had a teacher inspire you? Has someone ever made such a lasting impact that it stirred, even altered, the course of your life? If your answer is yes, you are quickly becoming a statistical anomaly in our society’s education system.

Perhaps it was that thirst for knowledge that helped you to become more than you thought you were capable of. Sometimes you can even pinpoint the very thing it was that a teacher said or did that clicked inside, that taught you to go a different way. What was that unique quality they had that helped you learn? Was it the very thirst for life itself?

Babies come into the world with a genetic predisposition to learn, second only to the most basic of needs. It is almost as if young children need to learn as naturally as they need to eat and drink. Everything is a question, exciting, and new. What is it then that changes for some students, somewhere between kindergarten and twelfth grade? What makes the enthusiasm fade, until it is finally replaced with a dread for school, and subsequently for learning?

Our educational system is failing; there’s no secret about it. You can go to any bookstore and pick up ten different books about how it is failing, why it is failing, where it is going, and how much money we are wasting on it. The facts are clear. The United States is ranked one of the lowest nations in education when compared to the modern world, according to statistics by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We rank fourteenth out of thirty-four OECD countries in reading, seventeenth for science and twenty-fifth for mathematics, while countries like Canada, Finland, Korea, and Japan rank higher above the Unites States.

Some supporters of our education system point out correctly that we still outrank countries like Chile, the Philippines, or Indonesia; I say, if we have to compare the United States to developing nations, then our standard begins at a very low and impoverished level. Even so, we may have to squint past countries like Mexico, Slovenia, and Poland who surpass our performance as well.

Why is our education lagging so far behind? Shouldn’t we be ranked amongst the top countries when it comes to the education of our youth? How is it that we have fallen so far below our own standard? The answer is not as complicated as you might think. You see, we have a standard. We just don’t have the idealized standard we were led to believe we had.

So, let us go back to the original question. Why is our education system failing so miserably? And why has it not succeeded in its efforts to raise scores? The answer is because it has changed the definition of learning. Unlike our Oxford definition that states that learning is the acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught, the system has convinced the public that learning is the systematic acquisition of trivia that one can spit out at any given moment.

Let’s go beyond that for a moment, because learning is not only usable knowledge, it’s the discovery of life. It is a part of life, and synonymous with living and enjoyment. In other words, learning is fun.

I’m not talking about the kind of fun that one experiences when going to the movies. That kind of fun is simply entertainment. I’m talking about the joy that comes as one fulfills the purposes of the human experience. Because we as a species are not meant to merely perpetuate but to grow intellectually. That is what brings fulfillment. Thus our race is constantly striving to reach beyond itself.

Think about it. What are some of the most rewarding aspects of being human? If it were not for learning to do things on our own, to grow, to experience new things, then life would become dull and boring. Think about the things that you treasure most in life. Most likely they are tied to some basic aspect of living, inseparable to learning. And that is the core element of life: to live life as full as we can and enjoy learning.

Think about what you do when you’re having fun. I for one laugh. I laugh out loud sometimes. I make noise, I yell, I smile, I move around, and I certainly talk to my neighbors about it. In fact, quiet is the thing you do when you’re not having fun. You see, fun isn’t a stagnant-dormant thing. Imagine if you were to place someone at a desk for seven hours, tell them that they must be absolutely still, and expect them to pay attention and learn. You have to be out of your freaking mind. The sad part is: what if you succeed?

Now, for the most part, you as a reader will not believe that learning is fun. Why? Because learning is so inevitably related to school. We have been so grilled, year after year, that the system’s definitions are well engrained. So let us remember then. Let us go back for a moment to when we were not engrained or conditioned yet.

Do you remember when you were five years old? How did you act? What did you think? Take a moment to remember what it was like. School was a new thing, and you didn’t know a lot about that. So let’s talk about what you did know. Were your thought patterns different than they are today? What did you usually talk about? How did you find out about things? Did you have a lot of questions? And when you found the answer to something, did it amaze you? Was it fun? If you can’t remember, it’s ok. Just take a look at a child around you, perhaps your child, and take them for a representation of how you used to be.

Now count how many silly questions they ask in one day. Count how many curious things they want to know. Also, take note of what their face does when they are given an answer that satisfies their curiosity. You will probably note that you will not be able to attain this satisfaction with one simple answer, but until you answer many follow up questions.

When your child takes a breath between questions, and when they finally sip and are full, what is their face like? Are they smiling? Are they even laughing? If it’s not fun, then why do they keep asking so many questions over and over?

A child’s brain is like a sponge. The amount of knowledge it soaks in is astronomical. Simple things that we take for granted require a vast amount of knowledge and processing skills. Consider how much energy and understanding it takes to simply open a door. While you might not think of it when you do, or ask how it works, a child probably will. And you will undoubtedly answer that you don’t know, and brush the question off as something silly to ask. Of course, you have already been trained not to ask those sorts of questions in your many years of schooling.

Renowned author Robin Sacks in her e-zine article had this to say about the reason why a child’s curiosity fades. The problem is not with the child; the problem is with the world that almost immediately starts telling them to stop asking so many questions."

A Newsweek article titled The Creativity Crisis explained that preschool kids ask their parents about one hundred questions a day, but that this inquisitive trend ends right about the time they start middle school. Warren Berger of A More Beautiful Question asks: Have kids stopped asking questions because they’ve lost interest? Or have they lost interest because the rote answers-driven school system doesn’t allow them to ask enough questions?

My little daughter asked me the other day a series of questions about why cats meow. She asked if they were saying something, followed up by but are they really saying something, continued by do other cats understand each other’s meowing, and after a string that went on for several minutes, jumped around chanting and laughing you mean they can talk!

She might not have understood all the scientific rational behind my explanation of cat vocalizations, but she certainly understood the important concept behind it. Better yet, she was excited about it.

Now think about school. There you are taught not to ask so many questions. I mean, you can ask, but certainly only the right kind of questions, and they must be the kind of questions that fit into the lesson planned out for the day. They can’t be fresh ideas that sprout out of the box, because that would lead in the wrong direction, and keep interest alive. You must also raise your hand, and pop out the answer instantly. There is no room for thought.

You are taught that the quick answer gives the better reward. The quick answer comes from the text, and the text’s facts can and should be memorized. But you do not get to do anything the text says. You do not even get to explore those concepts, let alone your own ideas. You must always repeat what is said to you, and quickly for you are timed.

School’s slope into lifeless learning doesn’t begin at all this way. The system has to have a buy-in; otherwise it would seem too unnatural and intrusive at first. Where does that buy-in begin? Kindergarten of course.

Take a tour of any kindergarten class, and it is a strange world inside the rigorous stale halls of academia. There are toys, singing, playing, rolling around, eating in the classroom, followed by a nap. Who ever heard of such a thing? It is the weirdest and most wonderful extraordinary thing one can encounter. Slowly but surely, however, this element of fun must be drained, from first to second grade, from laughter, to smiles, then to the serious conduct that reflects a vibrant learner.

The other day a new student of mine was impolitely mimicking me in front of a few other students. I asked him why he wanted to be rude, and he responded that he’d never seen an adult act the way I do. He’d never seen someone rehearse a scene out of a play, or make a spontaneous joke in a classroom, or sing and dance for no reason at all. He said he had never seen a grown up laugh as I do all the time. I responded, Really? then paused. I didn’t respond for a while, for effect, then responded, that is unfortunate!

That same day, I was sitting in the office, waiting on some copies I was making during lunch. A third grader was sitting next to me, waiting to see the principal. He was in trouble. I looked at him, opened my eyes as wide as I could, and made a quiet noise like a pirate. Arrrrr. He knew I was a teacher, but he still asked if I was acoustic.

Sometime, in the early years, a child is taught to stop asking so many questions, to stop being so darn enthusiastic, and to step into the system.

The system has become the systematic way of analyzing and categorizing learning until it becomes adequately dull.

Joy is the wonder of life, and the need to learn. (Students are systematically deprived of it, until learning becomes a hateful thing.)

I ask my students to think about those days when their families take them to shop at Wal-Mart. Then I tell them a strange thing, that when I go to Wal-Mart I stand outside and watch. How many adults do you see smiling? I ask. Not very many, they answer.

They are all products of our public education system.

Chapter 2

The Learning Doppelganger

Every essence that sparks light has its equal shadow: something that is cast from the original, and forms from the light, but can only spread darkness. For every concept ever dreamt or felt, there is its rival. Love does not have hate, but lust. Respect does not have disrespect, but fear. Truth does not have lies, but rationalizations. To every light there is worse than darkness; there is the shadow. It is not quite the reverse, but a force driven to be much more destructive. For from the original it is shaped, but becomes only a counterpart, a counterfeit of that design.

This is the doppelganger. The falsifier of the original. The imitation of the truth. A resentful rival driven by envy. It must wait until the time when the light begins to fade. Then it can grab hold, come a little nearer (in the blending twilight) and assume its role.

Thus, the enemy of learning cannot be ignorance because ignorance, like a void, can be filled. The enemy of learning is far greater and it has stretched its artificiality into every classroom. It is the idea that learning is not sweet, but a bitter pill that must be swallowed regularly in order to do well in life. The establishment that controls this idea purges all highly exceptional or motivational teaching methods out of the system in order to transform the meaning of learning. Students thus become accustomed to disassociating learning with stimulating activities, and this mechanism is spread to every institution under the established order. With the exception of some small academies not acknowledged by the ivory dome, every school will follow protocol until invention is removed from learning.

Research shows that the plasticity of the brain grows with increased challenge. According to Adele Diamond, PhD, University of British Columbia, students need to be continually challenged in order to improve executive functions. Yet there remains a significant gap between the scientific discoveries that could improve our education system and the application of this knowledge (The Aspen Brain Forum conference on Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning: Implications for Education). School kids are bombarded with busy work in the form of worksheets, fill in the blank, and multiple choice problems that stay at the lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.

The doppelganger is the blueprint