You have got to be kidding...

Yes, testing has become a serious issue in education at all levels, but I didn't realize that it had trickled down to the lowest levels until reading this article from the NY Times today. Apparently there are kindergarten students who are not getting the chance to engage in play during the day because they are being bombarded by academics and testing instead. Now I know that this is an extreme example of one charter school but it is not as far off as you would think. What happens when students are encouraged to be passive learners? All kinds of things and it really bothers me that this is considered okay by a lot of people. We already know that NCLB is causing more problems than it is solving when it comes to the achievement gap. Students aren't learning why a math problem works the way it works or why it is important to question what you read for example. Instead they are just told to do the problem and fill in the bubbles in a pursuit for the right answer. I've started to notice that in teaching fycomp students seem uncomfortable with the idea of thinking for themselves in the classroom and it's not necessarily something they have control over. If they've never been asked to express an opinion or to question why of course they are going to have difficulty when they get to the college classroom. I don't know....it's a difficult situation but it is one that has to be dealt with sooner rather than later. I mean come on, when your five year old son or daughter comes home and needs help with a homework assignment that you can't help him or her with something's got to change.

Trying to keep up with the posts

So I haven't posted anything since Thursday of last week so I figured I had to write something to keep up with my blog. I think that without touching bases with it I will probably lose touch altogether and that would defeat the whole purpose of keeping a blog. Yes there are probably some who feel that only thoughts on specifics are worthy to be blogged....well I think in this case I'm going to say I'm not one of those people. I've thought about things since I last blogged but not actually felt the need to record them. On second thought, maybe I am one of those people. And another thing is that I'm still a little unsure about divulging every part of me online because it is open to everyone and anyone could just stumble across it and read it. Not saying that I'm especially offensive, but there are times when I feel the need to express every emotion and thought in my head. Perhaps this is why blogs can't completely take the place of personal diaries. Maybe that's not the intention though. I kind of like having my private journal even though it is a result of the ancient technology of handwriting, which seems to be more and more ancient every day. Do they still teach kids cursive in elementary school? I know that I had to learn cursive but I can't remember how to write it very quickly or with beautiful penmanship like my mother's for example. Part of me wishes I could, but who would I write? It takes so long to get a letter to someone outside the state and those who I would bother to handwrite letters to are out of state. I wonder if anyone else thinks of these things or if it's my grandmother's insistence on the personable nature of handwritten letters that has led me down this contemplative path.