Between a ROCK and a very HARD PLACE (Pt 05) - "The End" (or is it)?
Obviously, as Flash noted, not very much! It was a bit of a challenge for me to select an appropriate “opening image” for this post (especially because I used all me best ones for that bloody summary post - The “STORY” so far…). The most important thing is – I kinda left Part 04 by saying something about me “answering” the following questions:
How dumb was that? What was I smoking that night? I mean - the balls on the guy – suggesting that I had the “know-how” and “savvy” to fix this stuff. Not only that – I got all holier-than-thou...pretentious and spiritual, even - with that touchy-feely stuff about:
Sorry about that! You have to admit though, the Dexter quote was pretty “cool” – yes? Actually, I bet half of you are just reading this to see how badly I fall flat on me face with this one, right?
So, here goes nothing…
The fundamental “whinge” at the heart of this overly-long “serial rant” is that……“we” in education (more specifically – ministries, departments of education, school administrators, curriculum co-ordinators, course designers, teachers and...my dog) have introduced systems of curriculum pacing (more specifically – sets of curriculum pacing guides, grounded on either test specifications or textbook content pages) designed to keep teachers “on track” and “on schedule” vis-à-vis the so-called outcomes we find on our curricular – but, in practice, “tell” teachers what to teach, when and how to teach it and how “fast” to “get through” everything (often in terms of weeks, days, class periods and – for crying-out-loud - even minutes).
I ain’t finished, boys n’ girls… These curriculum "support" tools, we are told, are essentially to make sure “no child, or young adult, is left behind” – but we all know it’s more about “not flunking the test”. The reality is, and “we” all know this (by “we” I refer now to all those poor saps that have to breathe life into these documents – by racing, non-stop, from page-to-page-to-page from pop-quiz-to-pop, from…you get the point) – is little more than an attempt to ensure “standardisation” of the teaching that takes place in a school or system.
Wait for it… The result? These types of practices and pacing guides prevent teachers from being the great LEARNers, QUESTIONers and CONNECTors that they can all be, almost always guarantee these same TEACHers have to go back to traditional forms of “teacher-centered instruction” and make adaptations to the curricular (or simply “dump” stuff) that make them even more ineffective – yani, usher in “factory model TEACHing”!
Oh, yes – almost forgot! These very same practices reinforce “assembly line LEARNing” in students, hinder real and meaning growth in our kids and young adults – and make them hate “us” (and by “us” I mean all those lovely teachers). And, to add insult to injury many of them STILL fail the bloody tests… Now, I'm guessing a few of you are asking..."Why the HELL did you not just say this (the start of the first post) - and save me almost 10,000 words of READing"? Where's the FUN in that? The "real" question, of course, remains:
Who should we "give the finger" - sorry - "point the finger at"? I told you earlier - we do love our blame games in education... If you want my "two cents"...I know, I know...but I'm gonna give it to you anyways! This goes TWO ways - Firstly...
...and then...
