Pithy Keepers from the Comment Threads

This English teacher is a sucker for the well-crafted comment, and wants to share a couple here (if the lame wifi at Bangkok Airport lets him). First a pithy critique on the segregationism that creates the achievement gap, then a bit of wit from a writer I've long enjoyed elsewhere.

Mary Pellechia responds to the "Ouch. Massachusetts High Schools Go Kaplan" post with this nugget:

The soul-deadening of standardized testing (as opposed to implementing actual education standards) was part of the reason I retired early from teaching here in New Jersey.

It's a way of measuring "product."  Charting and graphing are what business understands, and there has been a movement to equate schools with business since "A Nation at Risk."  But good teaching is not a business.  It is an art.

In my opinion, our nation was never at risk.  I believe that attitude was fomented by Republicans disgruntled that the NEA usually supports Democratic candidates.  They are as determined to "bust" the teachers' unions as they are any other unions.  The best way was to create a national outcry and then introduce measures that would punish teachers and destroy our public school system.  If our nation is so at risk, why do people come here from all over the world to attend our universities?  Can the public schools which "feed" them be so horrible?

Yes, many schools are in trouble, but that is the result, not the cause, of decades of neglect of poverty and crime.  Our inner cities are in desperate need of help, including the schools, not because of the schools.

--and that's about as pithy as it gets.

Tom Panarese adds this bit of (serious) fun to the "Simulated Trauma" for Character Education post about a classroom simulation of sweatshop labor. Tom teaches in Virginia schools, which require Standards of Learning (SOL) tests a bit too frequently, it seems, for Tom's tastes:

Want to do a sweatshop activity that's relevant to NCLB?

Turn your classroom into a SOL test prep sweatshop.  Have them do multiple choice exercises until their fingers fall off and berate them for not doing it right and yell at them about how they are going to make the whole school fall behind because they can't get it together.  It teaches children about sweatshops AND helps improve test scores.

Win-win, I say.

You can (and should) read more of Tom, by the way, here. Wicked funny and perceptive writing over there.

Time to board that plan. More from the Hong Kong layover, if we're lucky enough to avoid my favorite airline euphemism: a "water landing."

Image by nyki_m