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.