Philosophy of education: Who do we serve?
Aug. 8th, 2010 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
"It's not the school's job to cater to [insert student with a specific difficulty which they may or may not have brought upon themselves here.] It's the student's job to figure out what they have to do and do it."
The specific scenario, in this case, was a teen mom who gave birth two weeks before the end of the school year. She got up from her hospital bed, left her baby in her mother's care, and went to write a couple of tests so she could graduate.
I have a really, really big problem with this.
First, I can't imagine who the school thought they were serving by requiring this. Most women are not at their best intellectually or emotionally a few days after giving birth, so it's not hard to imagine that the young woman in question might have seen her marks suffer when she wrote those tests. That makes the assessment invalid, because it doesn't match her usual abilities. If the test is not a valid measure of her abilities, then it's not serving her needs for her to write it.
She wanted to graduate and go to college in the fall, so the argument could be made that the college needed her marks to know exactly what she could do and to decide on admissions. I'm not buying it, again for the reason of the test's lack of validity: the college was getting a skewed view of her abilities unless she managed to pull some excellent grades on that test. So an invalid test doesn't serve the purposes of the institute of higher education, either.
So whose needs were being served? The school's, of course. The flexibility required to let her graduate without the week or so's missed work required extra work on the part of the school, and a lack of (what the school would call) fairness to other students. They might have to recalculate a GPA to exclude those tests, so she wouldn't be penalized for missing them, or they might have to give her an alternate, less-stressful assessment, or they might have had to plan in advance for her to finish her schoolwork (or at least finish enough of it that she could be said to have been evaluated on the full content of the course) a bit early due to the likelihood that she'd deliver around the time of her final exams.
I don't believe that's what real fairness looks like. Real fairness evaluates students in a variety of ways, giving them lots of opportunities to show what they know and can do. Real fairness can and should look different for different students. A rigorous adherence to a marking system based on tests and GPAs is inherently unfair, not just to our new mom in the example but to every kid who has test-taking anxiety, or a learning style that makes test-taking a problem, to name a couple of possibilities.
If some bureaucracy is inevitable in a public school setting (a debate for another day) then the least schools can do is ensure that what bureaucracy they have is essential to be fair to the students.
The specific scenario, in this case, was a teen mom who gave birth two weeks before the end of the school year. She got up from her hospital bed, left her baby in her mother's care, and went to write a couple of tests so she could graduate.
I have a really, really big problem with this.
First, I can't imagine who the school thought they were serving by requiring this. Most women are not at their best intellectually or emotionally a few days after giving birth, so it's not hard to imagine that the young woman in question might have seen her marks suffer when she wrote those tests. That makes the assessment invalid, because it doesn't match her usual abilities. If the test is not a valid measure of her abilities, then it's not serving her needs for her to write it.
She wanted to graduate and go to college in the fall, so the argument could be made that the college needed her marks to know exactly what she could do and to decide on admissions. I'm not buying it, again for the reason of the test's lack of validity: the college was getting a skewed view of her abilities unless she managed to pull some excellent grades on that test. So an invalid test doesn't serve the purposes of the institute of higher education, either.
So whose needs were being served? The school's, of course. The flexibility required to let her graduate without the week or so's missed work required extra work on the part of the school, and a lack of (what the school would call) fairness to other students. They might have to recalculate a GPA to exclude those tests, so she wouldn't be penalized for missing them, or they might have to give her an alternate, less-stressful assessment, or they might have had to plan in advance for her to finish her schoolwork (or at least finish enough of it that she could be said to have been evaluated on the full content of the course) a bit early due to the likelihood that she'd deliver around the time of her final exams.
I don't believe that's what real fairness looks like. Real fairness evaluates students in a variety of ways, giving them lots of opportunities to show what they know and can do. Real fairness can and should look different for different students. A rigorous adherence to a marking system based on tests and GPAs is inherently unfair, not just to our new mom in the example but to every kid who has test-taking anxiety, or a learning style that makes test-taking a problem, to name a couple of possibilities.
If some bureaucracy is inevitable in a public school setting (a debate for another day) then the least schools can do is ensure that what bureaucracy they have is essential to be fair to the students.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-08 11:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-08 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 02:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 03:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 11:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 12:47 am (UTC)And this is why, IMO, we need to reform the whole dang system. I tend to think it'll require fire and salting the earth, but I'm open to perhaps eliminating the salt.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 02:39 am (UTC)This process has been happening in Ontario in recent years. The system is more responsive than it used to be, in many respects, though it still has a long way to go to be really responsive. Some of the recent gains include a move towards restorative justice as a discipline model, the provincewide adoption of assessment for learning that is embedded into the learning process and student-centered, and an insistence on differentiated instruction as a key facet of classroom organization. I see elements in the rhetoric and documents coming out of the States that are in direct opposition to the last two, and that's a big, big problem.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 12:47 pm (UTC)I can imagine some areas embracing the things you're talking about, while other localities might be skeptical (as change is always difficult to adapt to). If those forward-thinking localities were allowed to implement reforms, then everyone could track results, and hopefully move towards those reforms that are most successful.
I know the hope is generally that with a Federal oversight, no children will be left behind (ha! :) ). But it also prevents other children from being able to make gains. And it removes too much flexibility from teachers who need it for their individual classrooms.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 03:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 12:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 05:17 am (UTC)I'm working on reform in my own small way, talking to one person at a time how my life is changing due to Waldorf and how I can't wait to take my own class up through the grades.
Waldorf is Education with He(art). It doesn't solve everything, but damn is it so much more satisfying to work in than public school.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 12:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 04:01 am (UTC)